Dangerous
by vrhame211
Summary: Faith Spencer, after finding an old Bible hidden in her mother's things, ends up on an adventure with Sam Drake. While unearthing information about President Abraham Lincoln, the two are taken to places physically, mentally and emotionally that they thought they would never have to go...or go back to again.
1. Cancer

Chapter 1

It had been 167 days since Faith Spencer had said goodbye one last time to her mother. She sat quietly in the dimly lit storage cove in the bottom of Susan Spencer's apartment unit. Faith waded through the last of her mother's things, old boxes full of memories long past, not from her youth, but her mothers. Things that had gone from house to house, apartment to apartment. Faith opened the boxes to sort them into her piles, the large one destined for Goodwill and the relatively small pile of things of her mothers she just couldn't bare to part with. A few journals with photos sticking out of them, a jewellery box, her mothers class ring. It was a nice class ring, adorned with the usual school and graduation year, a mother of pearl stone set into the antiqued yellow gold. She slipped the vintage ring over her middle finger, brushing her fingertips over the face of it as tears began to slip down her cheeks. Faith leaned back against the flimsy unit divider and slid down to the floor. She knew that this was the last of it, and that as much as she wanted it to be over, she wasn't ready. She was ready for the memories that flooded back and tore her heart out with every item that she touched to stop but she knew that once everything was sorted through and given away, that there would nothing left for her to do. Her mother was really gone, and she was alone and the looming thought of that loneliness was terrifying. But that was a bridge to cross on another day.

She blew out a deep breath while she wiped the damp tear trails away with her palms. She stood up and roughly scratched at her head. She shoved two junk boxes aside with her sneaker clad foot to reveal a panel of wood. Faith's eyes went wide as she put her auburn hair up in a ponytail.

"Holy shit, I forgot about this thing," She said under her breath.

She tossed a garbage bag of pillows behind her, revealing her find. Her mom's hope chest. Faith hated the thing. It was a monster piece of furniture, solid cedar, and very heavy. She opened the hefty hinged lid. Stale cedar smell hit her nose and she wrinkled her face in disgust. She knew that most of its contents were old linens, all destined for their next owner through the local Goodwill store. Faith grabbed a fresh garbage bag from her pile and began to shove the piles of folded cloth into the bag. She grabbed another handful, wondering how many tablecloths someone who hadn't had a formal dining room table could possibly need. As she settled on the answer of way too many in her head, her hand felt something solid among the pile in her hands. She dropped the bag and unwound the linen. Cradled inside the massive piece of cloth was a small brown book. It was trimmed in a faded gold metal and a small gold medal adorned the cover, the words 'Holy Bible' in a simple, elegant script etched into it. Faith delicately flipped through the thin pages, studying it intently. She had been through her mom's hope chest before but could never remember ever seeing this in here. She actually couldn't remember seeing it anywhere, ever. Her mother, a lapsed Catholic, had never really been one for Bibles around the house. She was always more Stephen King than King James, a trait Faith had also inherited from her mother. She knew that it was old, very old but being able to determine its age was not a skill set that she possessed. She wrapped it carefully back up in the large ivory tablecloth and reached into the pocket of her faded jeans. She quickly scrolled through her contacts and hit dial. Holding the ringing phone up to her ear, she put the wrapped Bible on top of her keep pile.

"Hey Aunt Mary, it's Faith. ...I'm hanging in there ya know. Um I got- ...yes, yes I've been eating," she said rolling her eyes with a small smile on her face. "Aunt Mare, I just got a quick question. You remember Gramps Navy buddy? The one that would just randomly show up and they'd end up at a poker game or drunk in the basement or something like that? He was an archivist or researcher? Yeah. You remember his name? ...His number? Even better. Hang on lemme get a pen."

She stuck her hand blindly into the small green army medic bag that she had been using as a purse for years. Her hand emerged with a beat up orange planner with a pen in it. She flipped the planner open to the back cover, already covered in miscellaneous date, names and numbers.

"Ok, go for it. Uh huh...uh huh...yep. Perfect. Thanks Aunt Mary. ...You know I'll keep in touch. Love you too. Bye."

Faith furiously pressed the end button on her phone until the home screen shone bright again. She slipped her phone back into her pocket and retraced the numbers she had just wrote down on the cheap card stock cover of the planner, darkening them. She also traced the name, bringing it from almost unreadable to a dark bold blue, muttering the name to herself as she traced over the letters.

Victor Sullivan.


	2. I Want Money, Thats What I Want

Chapter 2

"Are you out of your goddamned mind?!"

"Victor-"

Victor 'Sully' Sullivan stalked into the cheap motel room, furiously brushing the drying earth of off his brown bomber jacket. His silver hair stuck up wildly in multiple directions and his face had started to show his age, his moustache clad face was fixed in a look, a perfect mix of anger and disbelief. Trailing behind him, slightly limping, was Sam Drake, his entire body covered in dirt. Mud streaked his face and pine needles poked wildly out of his dark hair. He hobbled over to the cheap wooden chair and table, pulled it out and sat down with a slight grunt. Victor slid the gaudy flowered drapes to the room closed, taking no chance of the two of them being seen. Sam flipped on the lamp on the table next to him and began fishing around in his filthy denim sherpa jacket. He extracted a pack of cigarettes from his inner pocket and popped one between his lips.

"C'mon Victor, it coulda been worse," he said, rooting through his coat again. Victor wheeled around furiously.

"'Coulda been worse'? I was shot at, spent five hours hiding in a spider infested brush pile, you fell down a damn mine shaft and we have absolutely nothing to show for it! Tell me how it could have been worse?"

Sam gestured impatiently at Victor with his hand, giving up the search for his own lighter. Victor pulled his own battered gold one out of his pants pocket and flicked it across the room at Sam, who caught it expertly in his left hand. He lit his smoke and took in a long drag.

"We're alive and got all our own teeth. Well, at least I do," he said, grinning at Sully. Victor was not amused.

"What in your mind told you it was a good idea to go for the Oak Island treasure?" Victor asked, staring at Sam incredulously.

"A little birdy told me that they finally dug into the vault. I figured I would slip in and take a little look around first. See if there was anything good," Sam said nonchalantly. Sully sat on one of the double beds in the room with a huff, loose dirt from his clothes landing on the bedspread. "Well, evidently your little birdy neglected to tell you that Marty Lagina has a goddamn private army guarding the entire island."

Sam shrugged his shoulders, gently depositing the ashes from his cigarette in the ashtray next to him. "It's Canada, I figured how dangerous could it be in Canada?" Sam flicked the lighter back to Sully, watching as the man produced a cigar from his shirt pocket.

"The Laginas are from Michigan," he said, eyeing Sam as he lit it, giving it little puffs until it finally lit for him. Sam nodded slowly, extinguishing his smoke. "Explains a lot. But Victor, the amount of money that's down there," Sam sighed longingly as Sully cut him off. "That's your problem Samuel," he said, frustration building in his voice. "You don't know when to call it a day! When the risk of losing your life is greater than gaining the money, you call it a goddamn day! Even after Libertalia, you still haven't learned when finding it is worth it and when it's just too dangerous. Your brother figured it out, why can't you?" Sully spat the words at him.

The words cut at Sam. He loved his brother but hated being compared to him. His brother the great Nathan Drake. The man who found lost cities, buried treasure, but not his brother in prison. Sam had tried for years to not hold it against Nathan for not finding him. The wardens in Panama were pretty good at hiding the fact that the elder Drake brother was still alive, forging document after document and getting rid of whatever prying eyes came looking for information on Sam. As far as the world was concerned, Samuel Drake was dead and gone. Except that even after 13 years had passed, and he had settled into the fact that he would spend the rest of his life in this warm wasteland, someone had found him. Rafe Adler. When Rafe appeared, he was happy to let him pay for his freedom. Sam figured Rafe owed him for getting him into this hellhole in the first place. He was also ready to punch Rafe in his smug face and tell him to go to hell until Rafe started talking about Nathan's 'magnificent finds full of riches,' as Rafe called it. Whispers around the prison about Shambala being found had come and gone, Sam taking them with a grain of salt. But here was a third party, a partial third party but one to confirm the story none the less. Shambala, El Dorado, Nathan had even managed to find the Pillars of Iram in the wasteland that was the Rub Al Khali desert, and Nathan still hadn't managed to find him. Facts that Rafe drilled into his head every moment of the ride back to Rafe's hotel as he attempted to persuade Sam to help him find Avery's treasure. Rafe did forget to mention that Nathan had taken none of the treasure with him, making the payoff that he had made to get Sam out of jail impossible for Nathan to do. Even though he was with him when they found Libertalia, it had felt like an empty victory for Sam. They had found it together, which Sam had always wanted, but deep in the back of his mind, Sam knew that he was just the sidekick. The roles now reversed and the older brother had become the tag along. Sam knew that when it came to Nathan, when exploits were weighed and accomplishments measured, Sam would always be found wanting. Hell, the son of bitch had even managed to age better than he had.

Just as Sam was forming a slew of curses for Sully, a simple ringing came from Sully's pocket. He pulled his glowing cellphone out of his pocket, furrowing his brow at the unknown number displayed on the screen.

"Hello?"


	3. Easier To Run

Chapter 3

Faith carefully ascended the stairs of the museum clad in a midnight blue evening gown and matching heels, wondering for the two hundred and eighty sixth time today why she was doing this...

Three Days Ago

Faith knew The Cellar pretty well, the bar bordered on the line of shabby and shady. She was happy to see it was still leaning more towards the shabby side. It was your typical dive bar, complete with well worn u-shaped bar and aging pool tables and dart boards. The smell of cigar smoke and stale beer perfumed the air. Faith made her way towards the back of the bar, to the only occupied table. Sully caught glimpse of her walking towards him and stood, putting the paper he had been reading off to the side of his scotch glass.

"Victor?" Faith asked.

"Sully, please," he said with a smile, extending his hand.

"Faith," she replied, taking his outstretched hand in hers, giving it a simple shake. Between the genuine smile and the rough hands, Faith immediately felt comfortable to be in his presence, the build up of nerves in her belly that had accumulated throughout the day dissipating quickly. Faith sat down at the table, ordering a Jim Beam and ginger ale from the bartender that had appeared with another two finger glass of scotch for Sully.

"Oh I know who you are sweetheart, I remember when you were a little thing running around when I used to visit your grandpa."

"I wasn't sure if you'd remember."

"There's a couple of those visits I don't remember but it's hard to forget the little girl that stole cigars from me once for smokestacks for the factory in her LEGO town," Sully said with a laugh.

"Oh god, I remember that," Faith groaned and buried her reddening face in her arms on the table, the image of her overall clad self at seven flashing to life in her head. She chuckled and raised her head, running a hand through her auburn hair, settling it back to normal. Sully stared at her.

"You're the spitting image of your mother," he said.

Faith dropped her eyes and her chuckle quickly disappeared.

"Aw shit honey, I'm sorry," Sully said, realizing the raw nerve that he had touched within in her.

"It's alright," Faith replied, taking a swallow of her drink that had appeared beside her. "Just still trying to get used to the way things are now. Speaking of things,-" she said, pivoting away from the subject of her mother awkwardly. She reached down to her purse on the sticky floor beside her chair. She opened the canvas bag and pulled out the Bible she had found, now wrapped in a blue hand towel instead of the massive tablecloth she had originally found it in. "I was wondering if you could help me with this," she said, putting the wrapped book in front of him. Sully unfolded the towel and stared at the Bible with a furrowed brow. He picked it up gingerly, running his fingers over the cover and the gold medallion on the front.

He flicked at the spine, testing the binding. "Where did you find this?" Sully asked.

"Found it in my mom's hope chest. I thought maybe you could find out where it came from, Gramps said you used to deal in antiques."

Sully's eyes drifted up from the book to look at Faith. "Yeah, I've dealt with an antique or two," he said, hoping that she wouldn't ask for any references. Thieving artifacts and helping to destroy lost cities probably wouldn't go over well. Sully gently thumbed through the pages of the book, a folded piece of paper falling to the table from between the pages. Sully set the Bible aside, unfolding the paper delicately. He read the lines of handwritten script to himself.

"This looks like part of a speech. Slavery...Union...Definitely Civil War era," He muttered to himself, looking over the page in front of him. As his eyes scanned the ramblings, they settled over an underlined sentence. His bushy eyebrows raised in surprise. He looked over at Faith.

"Did you read this?" He asked eagerly.

"Yup." Faith drained the last of her drink.

"Well, I'm not 100% sure, but I think you might have something here," he said refolding the paper and slipping it back into the Bible. He wrapped it back up in the towel as gently as possible. "I'm not too good with my American History, but I know someone who is," Sully said. The cogs in Sully's head began to turn as he started to form a plan.

"Here's the deal sweetheart. You see, my friend is in town for this black tie thing. He donated a couple of items to an exhibit at the museum. Don't look that impressed, it's just a couple of broken pots," he said, waving off the artifacts as nothings as Faith's eyes widened with fascination. "He's only gonna be in town for this little bit, and I'm pretty sure he would want to see this..." Suggestion lilted in Sully's gruff voice. Faith raised an eyebrow, exasperated look across her face as she began to get the drift that Sully was pushing in her direction.

"Black tie?" Faith asked in a small defeated voice.

"Bring the Bible and the paper with you, he can take a look at it then. C'mon, beautiful girl like you, I'm sure you got a dress makes you look like a surefire knockout," Sully assured, Cheshire cat grin spread across his face as he looked at Faith. Faith smiled at Sully's charm. Her automatic response to things had always been no. Over the years, she had developed into a creature of comfort. She had taken care of her mother for almost the last 20 years, adventure was never possible. She had spent her teens and most of her twenties in the company of her mother. Of course she had friends and boyfriends but family had always come first, her mother above all. Now her mother was gone. It was time to live for herself.

"Please tell me it's open bar," questioned Faith.

 _Sam!_

 _Sam, what the hell are you doing?_

 _He's down!_

 _What's the matter with you?_

 _Fucking animal._

Sam's hazel eyes sprang open, the woman's voice and the crazed melody of Rafe's maniacal laughter still lingering from the dream. His heart raced, his breathing short and ragged. His recurring nightmare. It had been over 15 years but the events of that night in Panama still played vividly while he slept. Sometimes he would wake still hearing Rafe's laughter, or sometimes even have the faintest smell of the bar still in his nostrils, but the one thing that was constant was the dark eyes of the woman. The eyes full of anger, anguish and horror. Their stare bore deep holes within him then, and continued to now in his dreams.

18 YEARS AGO

It was his idea. Rafe had made the arrangements for the three of them to be taken into custody and put in the general population of the Panamanian jail the next day. The boys had decided to have one last blast of fun before their freedom was temporarily taken for the sake of Avery's treasure. Nate had picked a typical tourist bar out of habit. Tourist laden places meant easy marks for Sam and Nate to make some money. They grabbed a seat at the open air bar. The bartender approached and Rafe slapped an American one hundred dollar bill down on the bar.

"Ron Abeulo. Three glasses and leave the bottle," Rafe said nonchalantly. Sam and Nate rolled their eyes. Rafe had never lived a day in his life without money at his disposal, and his actions had always reflected this. Sam had worked his whole life to keep a roof over his and Nathan's heads and food in his brother's belly, even if it meant him going hungry for a day or two. Watching Rafe throw money around always sat poorly with Sam, mostly with distaste but also just a touch of jealously.

The bartender plopped three glasses in front of them, filling each with three fingers of the amber liquid. Nate picked up a glass and gave the liquor a sniff, it's strong smell turning his stomach before the liquid could hit his lips. Rafe slid a glass down to Sam as he raised his own, slightly tipping it to the brothers.

"To treasure gentlemen," Rafe said, emptying most of the contents of his glass without waiting for a return. Nate grabbed his glass and held it out to Sam.

"Sic Parvis Magna."

Sam took his glass and clinked it gently against his brothers.

"Sic Parvis Magna little brother," he said as they both took a hearty swallow.

"Jesus," Nate muttered, staring at the strong liquor in front of him while Sam let out a small whistle under his breath. Rafe simply let out a chuckle and topped off each of their glasses.

"Might as well enjoy it boys, it's going to be a little while before we drink something other than toilet wine," he said with distaste.

The rum continued to flow for Sam, Nathan and Rafe through the evening and into the night. Nate poured over his notes and maps through his drunk eyes as he tried to concentrate on the pages in front of him. Rafe, an always loquacious drunk, decided to regale the bar with cursory details of his business dealings, antiquities he had recently bought, making sure it was known to everyone around him that he was educated and wealthy. Sam sat quietly, people watching, enjoying his last evening of freedom for a while. Soon, the booze flooded Sam's system, causing Rafe to become much more amusing and his cigarettes to disappear a lot quicker than he was used to. Couples and tourists watched the three at the bar curiously. As the night went on and the liquor continued to flow freely, curiosity turned to aggravation as the constant sound of Rafe's cocky voice and Sam's increasing cigarette consumption made the rest of the bar's stares turn from amusing to disgruntled. While Nathan had remained quiet, head held up in one hand, Sam had joined in Rafe's revelry, now sitting on the sticky bar top, telling people how someday he and his brother would be rich, live up to their birthright.

"You might wanna reign him in a bit son," A voice said in Nathan's ear. Nate looked up to his left with watery eyes to see a man, judging by his voice an American, at his elbow. He was a middle aged fellow in a bright green Hawaiian shirt and tan cargo shorts. Probably there on a second honeymoon with his wife, thought Nathan, though at the moment she was nowhere to be seen.

"Huh?" Nate asked, blinking the man a little more into focus.

"I'm saying you might wanna get your brother under control," The man replied simply. Nate continued to stare at him, the booze simply clouding his mind too much to comprehend a word that was being said to him. Sam's ears pricked up, hearing himself being talked about.

"Can I help you pal?" Sam said loudly, jumping down from the bar, eyeing up the man talking to his brother.

"C'mon man, I don't want any trouble," The man said, defeated tone seeping through his voice, knowing that nothing good was going to come of this.

"Yeah, but, here's the thing," Sam said as he walked up to him. He stopped and leaned his face in close to the man. His eyes crinkled as a small, sadistic smile formed on his lips. As Sam kept his eye contact, his right hand reached up on the bar, stealthily grabbing a long empty bottle of rum around the neck.

"I kinda do," Sam replied, bringing the bottle down directly on the man's head. The bottle came down hard and fast, shattering as it made contact with his skull. The man crumpled to the ground as three large men quickly stood and charged at Sam. Rafe, finding Sam's action very amusing, cackled with laughter and jumped to Sam's side and into the fray, ducking a right punch from one of the locals, while throwing one of his own that managed to connect. The sound of falling glass roused Nate from his drunken daze to an immediate stance of action.

"Sam! Sam, what the hell are you doing?" Nathan yelled, standing up from his bar stool.

"Might as well actually go to jail for something little brother!" Sam shouted back, slipping out of a headlock. Rafe found this absolutely hysterical, his high pitched drunken laughter filling the bar as he sent one of the guys to the ground with a firm kick to one of his knees. The simple bar fight quickly grew into an all out brawl, tensions that had built in the bar over the evening finally bubbling over with Sam's sudden physical, violent action. Government police flooded into the bar, bringing the fight to a halt. Two uniformed men grabbed Sam and slammed him into the side of the bar, knocking the wind out of him. A large hand grabbed his head and pushed it down into the bar top. Blood drizzled from his eyebrow and the corner of his jaw where a lucky blow had landed and already began to turn an off colour yellow. Sam turned his head, letting the blood drip out of his eyes and onto the bar. On the floor he saw the pandemonium he had caused. Rafe was pinned on the ground by three officers, still laughing. Glass shards covered the wooden floor, along with spilled beer and the intermittent drops of blood. Among the chaos, two paramedics knelt attentively over a body, they conversed quietly in Spanish to each other while a woman with dark hair held the hand of the man on the ground. Sam noticed the bright green shirt covered in spatters of blood, the guy he had smashed with the bottle. Metal handcuffs clicked tightly in place around Sam's wrists. The large cop behind Sam grabbed a handful of his dark hair, yanking him upright. The movement caused the woman's eyes to shoot up.

"What the hell is the matter with you? Que?" The cop said in a thick accent. The voice sounded hollow in Sam's ears as he continued to stare at the woman across the room, her gaze connecting with his. Tears seeped from the corners of her dark eyes, eyes full of hate and anguish stared deep into Sam's, the rum haze in his brain clearing, the unsettling stare causing a sobering clarity to wash through him. Sam saw the words form on her lips. Rafe's mad howling, Nathan's pleas in Spanish, the people talking excitedly about the fight, all these empty sounds fell away within Sam and with perfect clarity, he heard the two words the woman said to him, full of anger, hate and despise.

"Fucking animal."

Sam sat up and looked at the small alarm clock on the nightstand. 4:08PM glowed in bright red. Shit, he knew he should have set an alarm. He flipped the dull sheets off and swung his feet to the floor of the hotel room. He pulled his white t-shirt off, damp with nightmare fuelled sweat, and flung it across the room onto one of the simple wooden chairs that seemed to be in every cheap motel room. He rubbed his stubbly face with his hands and grabbed his open pack of cigarettes and lighter from next to the alarm clock. He popped a smoke between his lips and lit it, taking a long drag as he stood up. He stretched and gave a little groan. He walked across the room to the cheap wardrobe and removed the garment bag that had been hung there the night before. Sam's mouth twisted into a sour look.

He hated getting dressed up in these damn penguin suits, but his brother had asked him to come, and when Nathan was involved, Sam couldn't find it in him to say no. Exhibit openings were not something he enjoyed, he didn't even like going for recon purposes. Too much security taking notice of him taking notice of them. Nathan had even asked nicely, rich people made him uncomfortable, unless he was stealing from them of course. But now Nathan was officially retired, complete with above board salvage business and brand new baby. Elena normally went with him to these functions, but an infant made that difficult. So, Nate had agreed to go and rub elbows, make "connections", and drink the watered down scotch at this thing, Sam along for moral support. Sam hadn't seen Nathan in over a year, it was time to catch up with his brother and get his mind off his spat with Victor. Both Sam and Victor agreed they both needed a little time on their own after the Oak Island debacle. Sam made a mental note to make sure all future information from Charlie Cutter came from a sober Charlie Cutter. Sam knew that Victor was in his own words, "Gettin' too goddamn tired and too goddamn old for this shit." Sam knew that he wasn't. He felt a fire within him that still burned for a great find, a great discovery, a great payday. It was still out there, waiting for Sam Drake to find it.

Sam sighed and headed towards the shabby bathroom, turning on the shower. In the meantime, he thought, might as well check out the goods at this museum and enjoy the watered down scotch, and swung the bathroom door closed behind him.


	4. The Joker and The Thief

Chapter 4

Faith carefully ascended the stairs of the museum clad in a midnight blue evening gown and matching heels, wondering for the two hundred and eighty sixth time today why she was doing this. The sun had almost finished its descent of the day, bathing the night in an indigo hue while the city lights twinkled and streaked the approaching night sky. Faith had taken a cab, feeling too nervous to drive. A black tie event was not her element at all, nor meeting with people she barely knew. She looked to the top of the stairs and breathed a sigh of relief, the fear of being stood up fading from within her as she set eyes on Sully, who was looking quite dapper in a jet black tux and matching bow tie. Sully eyed Faith up and down, letting a wolf whistle escape his lips.

"Well look at you!" He said, obviously very impressed. Faith grinned and began to blush. She looked down at her shoes and the blue dress. She remembered buying it three years ago for an old boyfriends company Christmas party. He had sadly broken up with her a week before the party, sadness not from mourning the loss of the relationship, but more that she didn't have an occasion to wear the dress anymore. Faith wasn't really a dress kind of woman but she really liked that one so she was happy to take it out of it's garment bag that afternoon and put it to use.

"I look okay? Am I dressed up enough?" She asked.

"Sweetheart, you look like a million bucks. I am one lucky fella!" Sully said, gentlemanly offering his arm to Faith. Smiling, she slipped her arm through his and they headed towards the building. They passed through the front doors of the main lobby and down a side hallway. Faith recognized the glass atrium doors from a lecture that she attended here while she was in college. Her recognition stopped as she passed through the doors. Inside, the room was adorned with different deep colors, emerald green tablecloths adorned a dozen round cocktail tables while glass cases containing different archaeological finds of the Great Lakes lined the edges of the room. A dark walnut wood floor complimented the wine colored accents spread throughout the room. She glanced at the glass ceiling, unable to recall ever seeing chandeliers from her previous visit. Dozens of people in elegant attire were scattered through the rooms, mingling with sharp dressed waiters passing hors d'oeuvres. Faith glanced at the faces in the crowd and spotted the city mayor and started to think that exhibit openings were a bigger deal than she ever thought they could be. Sully skirted them around the edge of a small dance floor towards the far edge of the impromptu bar that had been set up for the evening.

"Nate!" Sully said as he approached a trio of people standing at the end of the bar. Nathan Drake looked up, a relieved smile replacing his nervous one as he excused himself from the older couple he was talking to and strode towards Sully and Faith.

"How ya doing kid? You're lookin' good!" Sully said, embracing him in a quick guy hug.

"I'm alive and upright so I can't complain too much," He replied. He ran a hand through his russet colored hair. He turned to Faith, an impressed smile across his face.

"You must be Faith, Nathan Drake, " Nate said, extending a hand. Faith shook his hand, trying to hide the schoolgirl giggle that was forming inside of her as he said her name. Nathan Drake was a good looking man, she couldn't deny that. Faith gritted her teeth together underneath her friendly smile, keeping her composure. Nate looked at Faith's dress and turned to Sully, looking rather impressed and questioning.

"What can I say? I still got it," Sully replied smugly.

"Ah you cradle robbing bastard," Nate said with a grin. Faith, cluing into what was being insinuated, grabbed Sully's arm and leaned into his chest.

"Oh he wishes," she said with a chuckle and a confidence that she wasn't used to having.

"So, where's this book you want me to look at?" Nate questioned.

"Lets move this to somewhere a little more private, yeah?" Sully said. Nate nodded in approval and headed towards a doorway off the side of the atrium. As they approached, the door swung open. A burly looking man in a white suit reminiscent of Colonel Sanders strode out the door, stopping suddenly in front of the trio. A bushy auburn mustache perched atop his thin lips while long copper red hair hung down his back in a ponytail. He had a deeply weathered face which made him look much older than he was. In one hand he carried a walking stick, in the other a top hat to complete his ensemble and to hide the mangled hand that it was held in. He was missing his last two fingers completely while the remaining others looked as if they had been broken and never set right. As they stopped suddenly, Sully instinctively reached for Faith's arm, pulling her back gently, as if to put some distance between her and this stranger.

"Victor Sullivan, long time no see. What are you doing up in these parts?" The man asked, his deep voice accented with a southern drawl and a big grin. Faith, noticing the sudden rigidness in Sully's posture, took a cautious step nonchalantly back behind him.

"I was in town on business, thought I would catch up with Nate here," Sully answered simply. The man's eyes lit up and darted between the two.

"I thought you two were out of the game, you're not planning a reunion tour now are you?" He asked eagerly.

"Nope, strictly a pleasure visit. I should ask you the same thing Jasper, you don't normally stray too far from Georgia." Nate questioned.

"I financed a couple of the excavations near Fort York and I just wanted to make sure that everything was going to a good home. It really is amazing what you can find underwater." He said, a large smile across his face and his dark green eyes landing on Faith. His eyes were purely predatory, despite the smile, which made anxiety flush through her. The light streaming down from the chandelier suddenly shadowed her as a large figure stepped close to her side. She turned her head and came face to face with Sam Drake. He glanced down at Faith and gave her a quick wink.

"How ya doin' Jasper?" Sam asked.

The man, knowing that he was outnumbered and knowing that this could get ugly, decided to excuse himself from the stiff conversation. He cleared his throat and perched the top hat on his head, giving it a tip with his disfigured hand towards Faith with a small smile. She gave a quick, small smile of her own as he stalked away, taking long strides across the room.

"Who was that?" Faith asked.

"That, was Jasper Nox. American antiquities collector," Nate replied.

"And overall sleaze ball. The man thinks the South will rise again. He even still owns a cotton plantation. Or he owns a peach farm, can't remember which. Some southern stereotype," Sam said.

Faith, confused at the person standing next to her, turned and stared at Sam.

"Sam Drake," He said, offering his hand.

"Faith Spencer," Faith replied, giving his hand a quick shake. _This has to be a brother_ , Faith thought to herself. Sam had similar eyes as Nathan, but while Nate's were a tropical ocean blue, Sam's were a warm hazel with flecks of gold bursting in the irises. She noticed the weathered look of his face and the high forehead as well as the larger frame and thought, _gotta be an older brother._ Faith glanced at Nate.

"Drake?"

"My brother."

Faith nodded as they headed into the small room off the side of the atrium. It looked like an overflow room with a couple more of the cocktail tables and piles of different color tablecloths and buckets of silverware stashed in the corner. Nate and Faith strode ahead while Sully held back, walking slowly next to Sam.

"Samuel," Sully said, hint of a chill in his voice. Even if Sam had let their last argument go, Sully was still a little sore, emotionally and physically.

"Victor. Didn't know you were supposed to be here."  
"Last minute favor for a friend," Sully explained. Sam's eyes flicked up to get a quick glimpse of Faith's backside as she walked into the room.

"Nice lookin' friend," Sam said, slight surprise in his voice.

"Sadly, not that kinda friend," Victor said, defeated undertone seeping into his low voice.

Faith walked up to one of the cocktail tables, set down her silver purse and unzipped it. Carefully, she removed the book, still wrapped in the hand towel. She set it next to her in front of Nathan. Nate unwrapped the towel and held the Bible in his hands. Full of curiosity, he inspected the cover, spine, even held it up to his nose to smell it. He turned the pages gently, inspecting the title pages.

"Caslon typeface, leather hardcover, I'd say late 1700's. London printers, family Bible?" Nate questioned. Faith shook her head no as Nathan turned to the loose page that had fallen out for Sully.

"That is what I thought you would find interesting, especially the underlined bit." Sully said as Sam moved closer to his brother to get a closer look.

Nate took the old piece of paper and unfolded it. On it was notes for what looked like a speech. Nate scanned the gentle script handwriting. The page was covered in random lines, with some scratched out. Three quarters of the way down the page, a line was underlined and circled, highlighting it's importance. The line read, ' _A house divided against itself cannot stand_."

"Holy shit!" Sam and Nathan exclaimed in unison.

"Whoa, stereo!" Faith chuckled.

"Nate, is this the Gettysburg?" Sam asked anxiously. Nate nodded his head furiously.

"No, no. The notes don't match."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, it's not the Gettysburg. This is more focused on condemning slavery and abolition."

"But it is him, isn't it?" Sully said, twinkle of excited knowledge glimmering in his eye.

"This writing? No, question. It's his," Nate replied.

"Goddamn kid," Sully said, proud grin across his face.

"Who are we talking about?" Faith asked, slightly annoyed.

"Lincoln," All three answered simultaneously.

"Lincoln? Lincoln Lincoln? 16th President of the United States Lincoln?" Faith questioned incredulously, not quite believing what she had just heard, considering where she found the Bible.

"One and the same," Nathan answered, taking out his phone. Thanks to Elena's urging and much to his distaste, Nate had slowly begun to let go of his love of paper and store important information in his cell phone, though he did manage to draw the line at storing things in "The Cloud". If he couldn't access it as quick as pulling out his journal, he wasn't having it. Being beholden to WiFi was out of the question as far as Nate was concerned. Nate scrolled through his phone, tapping away at the infernal device, obviously unhappy with it. Meanwhile, Faith carefully grabbed the paper, now of sudden value, and slid it towards her, anxious to get a look up close of President Lincoln's handwriting. Sam stood next to her, reading close over her shoulder.

"How long have you been holding onto this?" Sam asked quietly, knowing he was right close to her ear. As he spoke, Faith felt the warm puffs of his breath as he spoke on her earlobe.

"Just found it. It almost ended up going to Goodwill," Faith said, turning the paper over in her hands.

"Good thing it didn't end up there. Bastards probably would have thrown it away, it being so old and all," Sam said.

"No appreciation for finely aged goods those fuckers," Faith said in a disapproving, joking tone. Sam let out a laugh and cocked his head at a grinning Faith. Sam really was not sure what to make of this woman. He had known her for a total of five minutes but something just seemed off kilter about her, unsure yet if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Sully, leaning on the table, hands clasped, chin perched atop his thumbs, watched Nate impatiently.

"So what are we dealing with here Nate?" Victor asked.

"Faith, the date scribbled in the corner, what's it say?"

"May 29th. No year. Underneath I think it says...Bloomberg?" she questioned, holding the paper up to a squinting Sam.

"Bloomfield?"

"Bloomington." Nate said, gaze up to the ceiling, reveling in his 'ah-ha' moment.

"And that means what Nathan?" Sam inquired, eager to be let in on the information his brother obviously had.

"This is The Lost Speech!" Nate said with amazement.

"What 'lost speech'?" Sully questioned.

"What's it doing in a Bible?" Faith asked.

"How much is it worth?" Sam's question piled on top of the other two.

"This, is Lincoln's most famous speech, even more famous than Gettysburg. It was so controversial, so engaging, that the reporters in the crowd forgot to take notes they were so, caught up in this amazing speech. The word Bloomington is where he gave the speech, Bloomington, Illinois. Now, the popular story was that there were no notes for this speech and he gave it completely improvised. But, according to other sources, Lincoln ran every speech he could by his wife, and before he gave them, he would hand his notes to her. She kept all of his other ones, there's no reason why she wouldn't keep this one too. Her family, her sister, said she always kept them in the family...Bible. Which makes this-" he said, placing a finger down on the book on the table, sliding it in front of him, grabbing the gaze and rapt attention of the other three, "The second Lincoln Bible." Nate finished.

"Why are there two?" Faith asked, absolutely fascinated by the pieces of history that were potentially sitting in front of her.

"When Lincoln got sworn in for a second term, they used a different Bible. The second one was the Todd's Family Bible. No one has seen it in decades. It's just been lost to history."

"Evidently not!" Faith exclaimed, gesturing to the small book.

"Nathan, how much are we talking about here? Seven figures, eight?" Sam asked eagerly, causing a dirty look to be shot directly at him by Faith. _It's was my mother's Bible dammit, mine! Not yours!_ She thought to herself.

"You don't understand. Lincoln's wife collected and kept everything dealing with her husband and the trial after he was killed. She went insane. Speech notes, telegraphs, hell she even got her hands on Booth's diary. It was all supposedly gathered up and destroyed. If this Bible is still out there, then the rest of her collection has to be too, and I'd bet my left nut the Gettysburg papers are in it, not to mention god knows what else."

"Price, Nathan. How much is it worth?" Sam pushed.

"The Bible itself, easily six. The speech notes? Considering they're one of a kind, the only real record of the speech...it's priceless, you can't put an amount on it."

"But if you had to put a price on it, what are we lookin' at?" Sam questioned. He was slightly annoyed by his brothers importance on the knowledge and history as opposed to the payday it came with.

"The Gettysburg notes have a guaranteed ten million payday, and those are notes they know exist. These...at least that. Maybe double." Nathan estimated.

"What about the rest?" Sully asked.

"If you can find it, you're talking about the largest collection of Lincoln artifacts ever found. It would be worth a shitload!" Nate said with an astounded laugh.

Sam ran a hand through his hair and walked away from the table, laughing to himself at the luck that had just been laid out before him.

"Uh Sam? You do realize this isn't _your_ book?" Nate questioned to his brother. Sam stopped in his tracks and looked at Faith who wore an expression of visible annoyance at him. Sully took the paper, folded it and returned it between the pages of the Bible, wrapping the book up in the towel and sliding it back to Faith.

"I think we have some eavesdroppers kids," Sully said quietly and darted his eyes towards the door. Faith risked a casual glance in that direction and saw the top hat shaped shadow being cast through the partially closed door. Her stomach dropped. This is the last thing that she wanted to happen. She quickly shoved the wrapped book back inside her purse and zipped it closed.

"Faith, stay close to Sam. Hey Nate, how do ya feel about playing The Asshole Game for old times sake?" Sully asked. Nate smiled and strolled towards the doorway with Sully in tow. Faith went and stood next to Sam.

"The Asshole Game?"

"Nate the Great, the master of distraction. C'mon." Sam grabbed Faith's hand in his and headed towards the door. They slipped quietly passed Nate and Sully who, in just a few seconds, had managed to draw Nox away from the doorway and out of their eye line. Sam lead her along the edge of the room, behind the artifact cases that lined the room. They came to a stop behind the last case. Faith's heart pounded in her chest while Sam was on alert but seemed to take this turn of events in stride.

"Why was that guy listening?" Faith questioned in a low voice.

"Jasper is a Civil War nut, he deals with all sorts American history relics but this Civil War shit is his baby. We had a run in with him years ago, wasn't too pretty. Victor ended up with a completely busted knee and a sunken boat full of bullet holes. Jasper ended up losing a couple of fingers," Sam looked out from behind the case of pottery shards. "So, what are you gonna do with the book?" Sam, asked, scoping out the situation.

"I don't know yet, I might just donate it to the Smithsonian or something." Faith said nonchalantly. Sam felt like his jaw was going to hit the floor. _Donate it? Donate!? Does this girl know what she has? How much money, how much potential money, she could possibly have? Especially if she finds the rest of it! She doesn't get it. She could be rich!_ The thoughts ran through his head quickly.

"What's happening?" Faith peered her head around the side of the case. Sam grabbed her shoulder and pushed her back against the case firmly but gentle enough as not to hurt her, intent on keeping them out of sight.

"Hey!" Faith growled, eyes suddenly blazing, nostril flared. She smacked his hand off of her shoulder. Her face a mere inches from his, she raised one pointed finger towards him.

"Do not. Touch me," she said in a low tone. Sam raised his hands in defense, a feeling of familiarity that he couldn't place crept up his spine. His mind raced trying to place the deja vu moment he was having when Jasper's voice raised above the disquiet of the room.

"Mr. Lagina, I had no idea you would be joining us this evening! How's life on the island of oaks?"

Sam leaned his head around the corner of the large cabinet to see if what he heard could possibly be true. It was. Marty Lagina stood next to Jasper, flanked by six large men that could only be described as a goon squad. "Son of a bitch," Sam cursed under his breath.

"What now?"

Faith turned her head around the corner. In a split second, chaos had erupted in the glass room. People began to scream and run for the door as a shot rang out. Sully was on the floor, his hand clamped down on his this thigh, blood seeping from between his fingers. Faith plastered herself against the back of the cabinet. Sam shouted for his brother and ran towards the action. Nate lunged himself at the goon with the gun while museum security ran towards the others, scattering them in all directions. A swift boot to the gut and the large man went back first into one of the artifact cases, sending it crashing to the floor. The gun flew out of his hands and into Nate's outstretched arms. Sully backed himself to the downed piece of furniture, seeking cover from the gunfire that had erupted. Sam bent down and grabbed Sully around the chest, dragging him backwards behind the case while Nate fired multiple rounds for cover fire. All three were ducked behind the large wooden structure. Sully pulled the folded up handkerchief from his breast pocket and wrapped it around is wound. A groan of pain escaped him as he tied it off tight, red lines of blood seeping through the cloth already.

"Fucking Laginas!" Sully exclaimed, his eyes closed tight, his breath coming in pants as the pain radiated through his body. He really was getting too goddamn old for this shit.

"Can't we just once get together without gunfire?" Nate yelled, firing shots around the corner of the cabinet. He flung himself out from behind the safety of the case, weaving his way through the tables and sliding under the tablecloth that draped the bar. Sam readied himself to follow when Sully roughly grabbed him by the upper arm.

"Where's Faith?" Sully asked.

"She's on the other side of the room!"

"Sam!" Nathan's voice broke through the screams and of glass breaking. One of goon squad from across the room broke into a run, heading straight towards the huddled men. Sam looked down and grabbed a golden orb from a pile of debris, courtesy of the smashed cabinet in front of him. He popped his head above cover, seeing the large man running towards him, a gun holstered in his side, a knife poised and ready in his hand. Sam chucked the ball in his hand, sending it right into the kneecap of the thug. From somewhere in his knee, a cracking sound sang out and set the goon reeling forward. He landed on his side next to Sam.

"Hey! I found that!" Nate yelled from behind the bar, where he was stuffing a torn off piece of his shirt down the clear neck of a bottle of 151.

"Sue me!" Sam shouted. The goon pulled the knife back, Sam landed a right hook into his face, knocking him unconscious. Sam grabbed the gun from its holster, tucking it uncomfortably in the back waist of his pants and pried the knife from the bruisers club-like clenched hand. Sully reached over and grabbed at Sam's sleeve to get his attention.

"Get her out of here."

"But Victor-" Sam started to protest angrily, not one to run away from a fight, slaughter, or even a one sided bloodbath.

"Samuel. Please." Sully's grey eyes burned with intent, through the glaze of pain that shone in them. Sam looked down at Victor. He had never seen the look Victor was giving him before, a pleading yet primal 'please'. Sam flicked his eyes at Sully's leg, the blood having soaked through the makeshift bandage already. The shaky hand that held the handkerchief in place coated in a thick, dark film of blood. The gravity of the situation sunk into Sam. He didn't know who she was, but she was important. She needed to be kept safe.

Sam nodded with understanding and placed the gun in Sully's other hand. A bottle exploded behind them with a whoosh as Nate's makeshift Molotov cocktail hit one of the cocktail tables, flaming liquid splashing on the armed Marty Lagina hidden behind it. Sam shot up and broke into a run towards Faith, ashen face and sweaty, who still stood against the cabinet where he left her. He heard the crack of splintering wood and the high pitch of a bullet whiz past his ear. He went down and baseball slid, coming to a stop next to Faith. He grabbed her arm and pulled her down into a crouch.

"Nathan!" Sam yelled.

"Kinda busy here!"

"Sully!" Faith shouted, frantically peering over Sam to catch sight of him. Smoke started to create a gentle haze in the room.

"I'm alright darlin' just go with Sam!"

"Nathan!" Sam hollered again.

"Just get her out of here!" Nate pulled a spare clip from the body of the man on the ground next to him and popped it into the gun in his hand. "Go! I'll find you! I got Sully! Just keep her safe!" He shouted, firing the gun at the gorilla of a man crouched behind a far table, giving Sam and Faith a clean path to get out.

Sam grabbed Faith's hand and pulled her towards the doors of the atrium. Fire alarms sang throughout the building. Sam pushed through the doors and down the hallway. Finally clear of the heart of the chaos, Sam slowed down his pace from a run to a purposeful stride, hoping not to bring attention to himself. He spotted a side entrance to the main foyer of the building. Sam headed towards it, thankful that he could bypass the throngs of people pushing their way out the front doors where a huddle of cops waited anxiously to greet them. Sam and Faith slipped out the side doors unnoticed. Sam stood, scanning the unfamiliar territory. Faith pulled her hand from his and smacked his shoulder hurriedly and then took off towards a line of green taxis that were waiting to take the drunken people from the bar across the street home. Sam followed closely behind. She flung open the heavy door of the taxi and launched herself across the back of the cab. She fished a twenty dollar bill, crumpled and wilted with sweat, out of the cleavage of her dress and thrust it at the cab driver.

"Go." Faith said forcefully as Sam clamored in next her.

Jasper Nox, leaned against the gray stucco wall of the museum. He watched the cab speed away with Faith Spencer and Sam Drake in it. He bounced the end of his cane against the ground rhythmically with his disfigured hand, smiling happily to himself. _This will be fun_ , he thought.


	5. Portugal

Chapter 5

Sam flung open the door and walked inside his shabby motel room. He threw the key on the wooden table near the window and drew the faded green plaid drapes closed. Faith shut the door behind her and looked around the room. Double bed with flowered comforter, bathroom with yellow lighting, cheap wooden table with two chairs. All the staples of your sixty dollar a night motel room. She sat down on the end of the bed, putting her head in her hands grinding the palms of her hands into her eyes. Nothing in the last two hours made any sense. She was told that she held a priceless piece of history in her possession, with the possibility of finding more, and it came to her mysteriously from her dead mother's hope chest. She had just witnessed a gunfight and more anarchy than a Michael Bay movie. And to top it all off, she was now sitting in a hotel room with a perfect stranger in an evening gown and heels. She thanked god that they were of a sensible height or running out of that museum in them would have been impossible.

Sam shucked out of his tux jacket and threw it over the back of one of the wooden chairs. He fished his phone out of his pants pocket and dialed Nathan's cellphone. 'You've reached Nathan Drake-'. _Shit_. Straight to voicemail. He pulled up Sully's number and dialed, holding the phone to his ear while he undid the buttons on his shirt. The line rang, and rang, and rang. Nothing.

"C'mon guys," Sam whispered to himself. He pushed end on his phone and threw it down on the table next to his key. He pulled the suspenders down from his chest, letting them fall to his sides, allowing him to wiggle out of his dress shirt. He fished his smokes out of his pants pocket and turned his attention to Faith.

You okay?"

It had been a silent cab ride back to Sam's motel room. The only conversation had been Sam telling the driver where to go and then to keep the change when he pulled up in front of the building. This is the first time he had said anything to her since the pandemonium at the museum began. Faith raised her head and stared at Sam, standing there nonchalantly with his white undershirt, head tilted to the side, freshly lit smoke hanging out his mouth, calm as a mountain lake, as if this was just another ordinary day at the office for him.

"Yeah, I'm good," Faith answered positively in a small voice while her head shook unequivocally no. Sam nodded with a small smirk and headed towards the small mini fridge tucked in the closet. He popped open the door and grabbed two of the three small bottles in the door. He shut the door with a thunk and swung one of the chairs around to face the end of the bed. Sam stood in front of Faith, arm outstretched.

"Here, it'll help, trust me." Faith took the small airplane sized bottle of Jim Beam and opened it with unsteady hands. She hadn't started shaking until she sat down. She took a small swig, letting the bourbon run down her throat and into her empty belly like a fireball. She took another couple of good sips and replaced the cap. She closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, feeling the liquor start to work it's way through, calming her nerves a bit.

"So...What the hell what that?" Faith asked. Sam took a drag of his smoke and sat down in the chair, sliding the ash tray on the table closer to himself. He kicked off the dress shoes on his feet and let out a heavy sigh.

"That was a warning shot."

"What do you mean?" Faith asked.

"Victor and I had a little trouble a couple of weeks ago and this was the other guy suggesting subtly that we 'Fuck Off'," Sam said, took one last drag and stubbed his smoke out in the ashtray.

"In what world was that subtle?"

"Okay, maybe not subtle but he got his point across." Sam reached down pulled the dress socks off his feet and pitched them into the corner of the room near his duffel bag. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. Sam opened the little bottle of whiskey and drained a couple of healthy swallows, digging his toes into the green carpet, rhythmically he clenched and unclenched his toes, pulling at the fibers. The jumping, live wire like nerves running through him that he was trying desperately to keep hidden from this girl finally dissipating through his lower extremities. He was worried about Sully, he was very worried about his brother, he was even worried about the girl sitting on the end of his motel bed. Sam grabbed his phone and pushed the button, hoping fruitlessly for a message to be there from his brother, lighting up the home screen. He really hoped he would hear from Nathan soon. Sam set the phone down on the table and turned his attention to Faith.

"Doin' a little better?" He asked.

"A little, thanks for this," She replied, holding the small, empty booze bottle towards Sam. He grabbed it and set it next to his. He grabbed the last bottle and held it up to Faith with a raised eyebrow. She shook her head and pulled the dark heels off her feet, letting them fall to the floor with a thump. She slid back a bit on the bed, allowing her to cross her legs Indian style under her dress and hunker down, elbows on her knees.

"Is Sully gonna be okay?" Faith asked.

"The old bull's been through worse. He'll be fine." Sam lied through his teeth, tipping back the last of his bourbon. He pitched the empty bottles into the trash can next to the bed.

"So now what do we do?" Faith asked tiredly.

"We stay here until we hear from Nate and we get the all clear."

"Here? I can't go home?" The scope and realness of the situation began to creep into her brain and her voice.

"Nope."

"I'm pretty sure whoever you pissed off doesn't care about me, let alone knows who I am."

"I promised Victor I'd take care of you. I don't need Lagina or Jasper's people figuring out who you are or where you live."

"You're telling me the hotel room registered in your name, a name they know and are actively looking for, is safer?" Faith asked, voice thick with sarcasm. Sam pulled his head back slightly in defense.

"Phony name, fifty bucks to the front desk guy, and I'm checked in as Christopher P. Bacon." He said with a slight smirk.

Faith wasn't impressed, there were too many emotions swirling in her head at the moment. Angry to be stuck in this sketchy motel room with this strange guy, Concerned if Sully was okay. Worried that getting involved with these people, however cursory, had put a target on her back. Frustrated that she couldn't go back to the familiar, cozy surrounding that was her apartment. And, above all, she was absolutely exhausted. Faith scooted to the end of the bed and stood up, hands on her hips so her thumbs could massage the spot on her lower back where her dress pinched.

"Well, _Chris_ , if I'm stuck here, I need to take a shower. I'm sweaty, I have glass in my hair and I really need some sleep, even if it's an hour. I do realize there's only one bed. I promise to share the bed itself, I make no guarantees about the covers. Unzip me please." Faith spun on her heel, giving Sam access to the zipper up the back of her dark dress. He pulled the zipper down steadily, taking in her back as it became exposed. Sam caught a glimpse of the clasps of her bra and the lace waist of matching colored panties, even the edge of a tattoo before Faith whirled around, clutching the top of her dress to her chest, hoping to retain a tad bit of her modesty.

"Thank you!" She said and shuffled towards the bathroom, stopping when her eyes caught sight of a pile of hastily folded shirts on top of Sam's duffel bag.

"And because I refuse to sleep in this dress or naked, I'm stealing..." She walked over to the pile and pulled out an orangey brown t-shirt, holding it up and giving it a sniff to be safe, "This shirt. Cool?" Sam gave Faith an amused smile as an answer, causing her to turn and stalk towards the bathroom. She stopped in the doorway and turned to Sam.

"One last thing. Do you need to pee?" Faith narrowed her questioning eyes at Sam, turning a simple question into one full of intent and gravity as if the truth was of vital importance to the world.

"I'm good," Sam nodded, trying to contain his smile.

"Okay then." Faith looked down at a pair of Sam's already worn boxers on the floor of the bathroom, discarded from a previous shower. She kicked them out into the main room, looked up at Sam, who had been watching her with interest from the moment she stood up, gave him a quick smile and closed the bathroom door with a thunk click, as she locked it behind her. Sam stared at the closed door from his spot in the chair, head tilted in bemusement. He just wasn't sure what to make of Faith. She was pretty and absolutely peculiar. He like the way she handled herself and the remarks she made intrigued him. He had no idea how Victor knew her. For someone he was so adamant about being kept safe, Sam had never heard him mention her name before. Sam turned and eyed Faith's purse that she had left on the bed, knowing what was inside the bag. The priceless artifact that rested in that bag, and the potential treasure it could lead to, intrigued him too.

Faith emerged from the bathroom feeling much lighter after having washed away the day's dirt and some of the stress down the shower drain. Her dark auburn hair hung in damp waves that grazed the tops of her shoulders, leaving little droplet marks on the shirt she wore. Sam's t-shirt was slightly wrinkled but the scent of bargain detergent under the set-in smell of his cigarettes ensured her it was clean. It was thankfully big on her and the hem landed just beneath her butt, but she still tugged it down self-consciously. She walked across the room and put her clothes that she was carrying down on one of the wooden chairs. Sam sat on the edge of the bed, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers, attentively watching the news broadcast on the small TV. He had changed out of his tux, opting for the comfort of a hunter green t-shirt and dark tan cargo pants instead. His eyes flicked up to Faith as she passed in front of him, then back to the program. The shootout was the lead story but gave few details. Big on the where and when, not so much on the who and the why.

"Anything?" Faith asked, settling onto the bed and slipping her exposed lower body under the cool sheets. Sam nodded and stubbed out his smoke in the ashtray.

"Just a lot of filler bullshit, but no talk of dead bodies at least," Sam said, flipping off the TV as the broadcast started to repeat itself again. Faith reached for her purse that still lay on the bed and pulled out the towel wrapped Bible and a glasses case. She put on her glasses and gave a couple of blinks as the edges of the world came into sharper focus. She unwrapped the book and took out the paper full of speech notes from between its thin pages. Faith ran her eyes over the page. She still couldn't believe this was possible. Why would her mother have anything that had anything to do with Abe Lincoln? No one in her family was into politics, no one had ever lived in Illinois and they sure as hell weren't related since she was almost full blooded Italian. Faith rested her elbows on her sheet covered crossed legs, her head tiredly propped up with one hand. She started to flip through the pages of the Bible, hoping that some clue, any clue, as to how it ended up in her possession would jump off the pages and scream at her, Here I am! She sighed, mindlessly clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

Hearing the sounds behind him, Sam slid around, propping a knee up on the bed. She was wearing his favorite t-shirt and was making one of the most annoying sounds on Earth. Despite both of these things, which he had always hated, he found her simple actions endearing. Sam hated it when exes wore his shirts. They always seemed to think it made them look sexy, but to him, it made every one of them look like they were a coat hanger in a potato bag. Except for this one. Faith was taller, curvier and the Fletcher Clarke's t-shirt she had on of his still gave the hint of her shape under the fabric. _Leave this one alone Samuel, it won't lead anywhere good_ , his conscience warned him in a Victor Sullivan voice.

"Keep staring, I might do a trick!" She quipped after more than a few uncomfortable seconds had passed, her eyes never leaving the book. Faith had seen Sam turn around in her peripheral vision as she perused the pages in front of her and she had never been fond of being stared at.

"Is there props involved?" He retorted. Unimpressed, Faith peered at him over the tops of her glasses. He dropped his head, rubbing the back of his neck and mumbled something Faith assumed to be an apology under his breath. Sam cleared his throat and scooted a little further up on the bed.

"You finding anything?" He asked, eyeing the book up.

"This person begot this person and this person begot that person. Nothing but normal Bible stuff," she said, closing the book and putting the notes safely back inside.

"You got no idea how your mother got it?"

"Not a damn clue."

"And she doesn't know either?"

Faith paused a moment. "Never got a chance to ask her," She replied, casting her eyes down at the book to hide the sadness that quickly filled them.

"I'm sorry," Sam said. He knew that look. He had lost his mother and he knew what the hurt looked like that went along with it. He would rather get shot or go back to prison than relive the days and weeks after his mother had died.

"It's alright," Faith lied, flicking the statement off with a nonchalant wave of her hand. It still wasn't even close to being alright, this unique find of hers moving a state of okay further and further away from her sight.

"So you're really gonna donate this to some charity?" Sam asked Faith almost painfully.

"If it's real, why not? What am I gonna do with it?" She replied, taking off her glasses and putting them back in their case, thankful to have the topic steered away from her mother.

"How about tryin' to find the rest of it?"

"And if I find that, again, I ask, what the hell am I gonna do with it?"

"Sell it to the highest bidder, buy an island and retire before forty."

"Meh," Faith said with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Are you kidding me? There's a treasure out there worth millions of dollars, just waiting to be found and you don't want it?" Sam asked, absolutely stunned at the thought.

"It's just money."

Sam felt as if she had slapped him. He had never felt that way about money in his life. The last time he heard that phrase, Rafe Adler had said it. It angered him then and angered him now. She was just another rich person in the world that doesn't realize how lucky they are.

"Ah, to not give a shit about a couple million dollars, must be nice." He said as he stood, his accent becoming thicker as his attitude bloomed.

"Excuse me?" Faith questioned, the attitude in her voice growing to match his.

"I'm guessing a couple million, it's just a drop in the trust fund bucket for you," Sam said, grabbing his cigarettes from the table and sticking one in his mouth. As he lit it, Faith climbed out of the bed, modesty be damned, to face down this unprovoked attack.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Her question laced with anger as she stood in front of him, staring him down. He was a good half foot taller than her but that didn't stop her from getting in his face. "You don't know fuck all about me or my life. Just because I don't give a shit about money doesn't mean I have a ton of it!"

"Bullshit."

"No, it means I give a shit about things that are more important than money, a concept you obviously don't understand, you greedy motherfucker!" Faith spat the words at him, face growing redder with every sentence.

"What the hell's more important than bein' rich?" Sam asked, convinced that she would not be able to give him an answer that would be justified in his book. Faith pushed down a hard swallow.

"Family," Faith said, trying to hide the lump in her throat the word gave her with a gruffness. Her tactic failed miserably but her pride held, never dropping the stare she gave Sam as she willed the tears to not form for once.

 _Waka waka waka. Bzzzz. Waka waka waka. Bzzzz._

The weird noise broke the tense moment. Sam turned and reached hurriedly for the phone while Faith's brow wrinkled. "Was that Pac-Man?" She asked, talking to herself more so than to Sam. Phone in hand, he navigated to the new text message that came in.

 _sully OK, magna carta 9 am_

"Thank Christ," Sam said, voice full of relief. Faith shifted next to Sam to read the text message over his shoulder.

"What's magna carta?" Faith asked.

"Code, it means sit tight until morning."

"And Sully's ok."

"Told ya he was a tough old goat."

"Bull." Faith corrected him.

"You get the picture. Which means we're here til the morning at least." Sam put the phone back on the table and moved towards his duffel bag. Faith slid back under the covers of the bed, the new hopeful news squashing the uncomfortable argument that was bubbling between them. Sam rooted around his duffel between the shirts and odd socks until his hand touched on what he was looking for. He put the handgun on the table. Faith, watching from the bed, sat up nervously, scooting back on the bed until her back was flush against the headboard. Sam stood up, raising a hand in defense when he saw the uneasy look on Faith's face.

"Just a little extra security."

Faith relaxed slightly as Sam took a seat in one of the chairs, keeping the gun on the table within arms reach. He slid the ashtray closer to himself and propped his feet up on the end of the bed, settling himself in as acting century for the night.

"Can I ask you a question?" Faith asked.

"Fire away."

"You work for Sully, right?" Faith relaxed and stretched out on her side, propping her head up with one hand.

"Business partners." Sam corrected.

"Business partners...doing what?"

Sam thought for a moment.

"How does Victor put it? Extraction and acquisition of relics and rare antiquities." He said diplomatically. Sam reached for his cigarettes and frowned at the weight of the pack. Two left. He put them back on the table and pulled a large bronze coin from his pocket and began to flip it end over end around his fingers. Keeping his hands busy was key when he was low on smokes. Faith pondered this fancy wording for a moment before letting out a small laugh.

"You're thieves!" Faith exclaimed.

"You know, I always preferred the term buccaneer."

"Buccaneers are only on water. Swindler."

"Privateer," He offered.

"Con Man."

"Treasure hunter."

"Pirate," she said, smiling, eyes droopy with sleep.

Sam smiled and flipped the coin at Faith. It landed on the sheet in front of her, a worn relief of a skull and crossbones adorned the one side. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand. A pirate ship ringed with a Latin script. Faith squinted to try and read the dirty, well-worn words.

"Hoodie mecome...ear-, Oh I'm way too tired for Latin." Her head dropped onto the bed with a groan of frustration.

"Hodie mecvm eris in paradiso. 'Today you will join me in paradise'," Sam translated expertly.

"Holy shit, this is real pirate treasure, isn't it?" Faith marveled at the coin and at Sam's knowledge of Latin. Sam gave an indecisive 'maybe it is, maybe it isn't' shrug and Faith flipped the coin back to him. She grabbed a pillow from behind her and shoved it under her head. "Were here until morning?" She confirmed.

"You got it sister, so you might wanna get some shuteye while you can," He said, sliding down in his chair, crossing his arms in front of him.

"I told you, you could have part of the bed," Faith said.

"I'm good sitting watch here."

"You're gonna watch the door all night?"

Sam nodded.

"Whatever, I'm not gonna turn down a guard dog right now." She grabbed the graying comforter and pulled it to her shoulders, getting as settled in for the night as she could. They sat in silence, Faith stared at the creases in the sheets while she waited for sleep to take over. Sam watched a sliver of the streetlight outside through the gap between the heavy drapes and the window frame. The minutes passed and with how exhausted Faith had looked, Sam was convinced she was asleep. He looked at the alarm clock on the nightstand. 11:32. He knew he was in for a long, uncomfortable night. He grabbed his smokes from the table, figuring on one now and one in four hours until he could get more, once he talked to Nathan. Faith's head popped up.

"Wait. Treasure, guns, people chasing you. You're Indiana Jones," Faith proclaimed quietly with squinted eyes.

"Ha! Indiana Jones. He wishes he was as good as I was. He's not even in my league," Sam said, lighting his cigarette.

"No Nazis, fedoras or destroying cities in your past? Fear of snakes? Can't land a plane?" She questioned.

"Trust me, I'm not Indiana Jones. I'm much better with a whip," Sam said with a suggestive smugness.

"I still say you are," Faith mumbled to herself, dropping her head back to her pillow. Sam finished his smoke, finally hearing the low, quiet snores coming from the bed. He refolded his arms and settled back in the chair. As the hours came and went, the weight of the evening and the strange situation he was in began to seep into his system, a system that was anxious to recharge. His eyes growing heavier, he glanced at the clock. 2:18. Sam stretched and closed his eyes. _I'm just gonna rest them for a minute or two_ , he thought to himself. He was snoring less than a minute later.

Faith's eyes opened groggily at the sound. She raised her head and looked around, momentarily disoriented by her strange surroundings. This wasn't her apartment. When she turned and saw Sam, the events of the previous evening came back like a vivid dream as if her mind was still unable to process what had happened. She glanced at the clock and saw it was already a little after four, though it felt like she had only been asleep for mere minutes. The series of grunts and mumbles coming from Sam caught her attention. He had fallen asleep, which didn't surprise her. She was sure last night didn't go how he thought it would either. He was slumped farther down in the chair, head tilted off to the side with his chin resting on his chest. One hand sat in his lap while the other hung down over the arm of the chair, his fingertips almost reaching the floor thanks to his large stature. Faith's brow furrowed, something was wrong. A sheen of sweat covered his face and beads of perspiration pooled at the base of his neck. His expression wasn't a peaceful one. Sam started to fidget and squeeze his eyes closed tighter. In his restless sleep, Faith heard no and stop. She sat up in bed. This was a nightmare, she was sure of it.

Her mother used to suffer with them horribly and she herself had had her fair share of them since her mother died. The nightmares hadn't started right away, it took a couple weeks for her brain to manifest the horrible thoughts in her subconscious and bring them out in her dreams. In one of them, her mother faked her death. In another, her mom was alive and didn't want anything to do with her. Then there was the one where her mother was possessed by a demon, which was the worst one yet by far. Every dream ended up the same way, waking up gasping for breath and in a complete state of panic, followed by the blow again that her mother was gone. A gasping breath and a low whine escaped Sam's lips and Faith knew it had to be a really bad one.

She flipped the covers off of her and slid out of the bed. She padded across the carpet and around to the end of the bed where Sam had set himself up for the evening. She knelt down, not wanting him to sense her standing over him; She didn't want to startle him awake and possibly get herself shot. Faith got close to him and gently placed a hand against his chest. He was awfully warm, his shirt damp and starting to cling to him and his heart thudded at a quick rhythm. Sam jerked and she pulled her hand away for a moment. He stilled and she brought her hand back to him, pushing just enough to keep steady contact.

"This is a dream, Sam. You're dreaming Sam. This isn't really happening. This isn't real. This is a dream, Sam. This isn't real," Faith said in a soft, clear voice.

She repeated the phrases slowly over and over. She had done this for her mother when she had her nightmares. They had always seemed to settle her without waking her. Hopefully, she thought, this will work on him too. Faith continued for another couple of minutes, unsure if it was working. The mumbles became less and less while beneath her hand, Sam's heart began to slow, the stressful thudding subsiding. His face relaxed, the expression now one of calm instead of chaos, and at last his breathing slowed. _Much better_ , she thought. A content smile on her face, she took her hand away from his chest and got back into the bed. She puffed her pillow and curled up on her side to watch Sam. Sam was greedy, presumptuous, and a thief. She wasn't a fan of any of these traits and their spat earlier didn't exactly win her over but... he agreed to keep her safe, he had tried in vain to keep watch all night. He even suffered from nightmares. There just might be a decent person in there, Faith thought to herself and if she was being honest, there was something that made him quite charming in her mind. She stared at Sam, content that he seemed much more peaceful than when she woke. She closed her eyes.

"Goodnight Sam," Faith mumbled. Then sleep took her again.


	6. I'm So Sorry

Chapter 6

"Hey, hey, Faith, c'mon wake up," Sam said as he smacked Faith gently on her leg with the back of his hand. Slightly startled, Faith blinked away the sleep in her eyes and propped herself up in bed on her elbows. Sam was sitting next to her, phone in hand. She could see it was lit up with an active call and was suddenly very awake.

"Sully?" She asked eagerly, sitting up fully now. Sam gave a slight shake of his head and tapped the face of the phone, emitting a beep.

"Alright little brother, we got you on speaker," Sam said, setting the phone face down on the bed between the two of them.

"How ya doing Faith?" Nathan's voice filtered through the phone's speaker.

"I'm hanging in there. How about you? How's Sully?"

"He's alright. Lost a lot of blood but they managed to patch him up. He already complaining so that's a good sign." Nate said. Faith looked at Sam, she wanted to make sure Nate was bullshitting her just to make her feel better. Sam caught Faith's glance and understood. He gave her an affirmative nod, confirming what Nate was saying was the truth.

"What about Lagina?" Sam asked.

"On his way back to Nova Scotia with 2nd-degree burns and his tail between his legs. I talked to his brother Rick and as long as you don't do anything stupid, like setting foot on Oak Island ever again, he'll consider the matter closed."

"It was Jasper that tipped him off, wasn't it?" Sam asked, though he already knew the answer.

"He called Marty the second he saw Sully and Faith walk in the door. Between Sully and me, he figured you would be close by."

"That southern fried fucker," Sam muttered.

"I hate that guy, he was creepy," Faith said to herself.

Nate let out a sarcastic chuckle on the other end of the phone.

"No kidding, I'd rather screw a clown than deal with him. Listen Faith, I had an idea about the Lincoln papers. When she got older, Mary Todd Lincoln moved back to Illinois and moved in with her sister and her husband in Springfield. That was the last place the Bible was seen and I think the best place to start looking for the rest of the papers. I got a guy that knows his way around the area. That is if you want to go looking," Nate finished. He wanted Faith to decide this for herself, it was her book.

"Why wouldn't she want to go?" Sam answered for Faith, who shot him a look of utter annoyance and frustration.

"It's not your decision Sam," Nate scolded him through the phone.

"Nathan."

"Sam."

"Nathan!"

"Sam!"

"Jerkface"

"Buttmunch!"

"Guys!" Faith interjected before the name calling reached a more playground level than it already had. "Nate is it safe for me to go home?" She questioned, anxious to get into some familiar territory.

"Yeah, just have Sam take a look around first to be safe," Nathan answered.

"Look, I just need like an hour to mull this over, alright? I just wanna think about it a little bit then I'll call you and give you an answer one way or another. That sound good?" She asked.

"Sounds good. Now I'm gonna go try and convince my wife that gunfire doesn't follow me everywhere I go. Unless Buttmunch is with me."

"I'll call you back soon, thanks, Nathan," Faith said quickly and hit END on the phone as she saw words of rebuttal forming on Sam's lips. She flipped the phone to Sam. He caught it and put it in one of the many pockets on his cargo pants. He stood up from his spot on the end of the bed and headed to his duffel, grabbing the gun from the table and stowing it back in it's hiding place.

"Ready to get out of here?" Sam asked.

Faith nodded in agreement and flung the covers off of her legs. Her bare legs reminded her that she was in a borrowed shirt and her only other option was an evening gown. She eyed the blue dress with a sour look on her face. Shimmying back into that dress was one of the last things she wanted to do. A pair of gray sweatpants that Sam had grabbed from his clothes landed on her legs.

"Figured you'd want those," Sam offered with a smirk, his hands stuffed in his back pockets.

"Thanks," Faith replied, sliding her legs into the large, comfy pants.

"Let's get the hell out of here, yeah?"

Faith began to notice a trend in the cab rides between her and Sam, they were quiet. The only talk was Faith telling the driver her address. Sam stared out the window at the passing streets while Faith held her roughly folded dress under one arm, her purse over the other, her hand settled on the Bible wrapped snugly in its blue towel. She stared blankly out the window of the cab, not seeing the world, but instead lost in her own thoughts. She honestly had no idea what to do. She was anxious for life to return back to some semblance of normal. Go back to work, hang out with a friend, spend an evening with her couch and Netflix. She was a homebody, not an adventurer.

The cab came to a stop in front of the apartment building. She handed the driver a twenty and told him to keep the change. They got out of the cab and up the front walk into the lobby, Faith leading the way while Sam followed close behind. His eyes darted around, making note of the security cameras placed throughout the lobby and near the elevators. Faith pressed the up arrow, a hollow sounding beep announced the elevators arrival and the doors slid open. She got in the car with Sam and poked the button labeled five. Sam watched the numbers climb, all while glancing at Faith and her purse where the object of his desire was kept. Faith strode quickly out of the elevator the second the doors slid open, tired of feeling Sam's gaze on her and on her things. She maneuvered down the hallway lined with doors until finally reaching hers. She put the key in the lock on the doorknob when Sam quickly placed his hand over hers.

"Let me check it out first," He said.

"Trust me, it's fine," She assured him.

"Just let me do this, alright?"

Faith stepped back and allowed Sam to go in ahead of her. He walked into the apartment and realized quickly that hiding in here just wasn't possible. Faith's home consisted of a bathroom, half a kitchen and one large room that wasn't much bigger than the prison cell that he had spent the better part of a decade occupying. It had all the normal necessities, couch, bed, coffee table and such and even Sam had to admit that it looked quite homey despite its small size. Sam peeked into the bathroom, checking behind the dotted shower curtain quickly and continued into the large room. He stood in the middle of it, doing a full 360, feeling like a moron now for his insistence on playing bodyguard.

"Satisfied?" Faith asked, leaning against the doorway leading into her room.

Sam looked around, he knew he looked like an absolute fool and hated it. He quickly opened up one of the dresser drawers, glanced around its contents quickly and closed it. "Now I am," he said with a chuckle and a shit-eating grin on his face. The fact that it just happened to be Faith's underwear drawer eluded neither him nor her.

She let out a snort and dropped her dress in a heap on the side of the couch. She made a beeline for the dresser, grabbing clothes from the second drawer and headed towards the bathroom, stopping briefly in front of the coffee table. She picked up the small glass ashtray that sat there and flipped it at Sam.

"Here," She said as she tossed it lightly at him. He turned just quick enough to catch it, saving him a direct hit to the dangly bits.

"Thanks but uh, ran out of smokes last night," He said, setting the ashtray down on the windowsill.

"Check the computer desk drawer, There should be a full pack in there. Don't worry, they aren't menthol," Faith called over her shoulder as she headed towards the bathroom.

"I thought you didn't smoke," Sam questioned as he opened the drawer next to him and took out a full pack of cigarettes.

"I don't but my friends do. Be out in a minute," She said, closing the door to the bathroom behind her. Sam opened the pack and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. He tucked the pack in his jacket pocket. _Finders keepers and all_ , he thought. He flicked open his lighter, lit his smoke and slid the large window open a crack. He had always tried to be a considerate smoker even before the world seemed to clamp down on it. With people almost making it seem damn near illegal, finding a considerate non-smoker like Faith was absolutely rare. _What non-smoker keeps an ashtray and an extra pack of smokes around for friends?_ Sam questioned as he inhaled. Taking in the flavor of stale tobacco, he grimaced, holding back a cough. Between the stale cigarettes and the pristine condition of the ashtray, it was evident that whatever friends of hers that smoked hadn't been around in a while. Faith opened the heavy bathroom door and emerged looking very relaxed in a pair of jeans and a green plaid camp shirt over a black tank top. The end of her glasses were clamped between her teeth as she headed toward her little striped loveseat she used as a couch. Faith plopped down, tucking her feet under her as she finished putting her hair up in a sloppy ponytail.

"So much better," she said with a sigh, sliding the glasses onto her face. She pulled the fancy purse out from beside her, unclasped it and placed the towel wrapped Bible from inside it on the coffee table in front of her. She leaned against the arm of the couch, her arms crossed over her chest. She stared at the book intently, like an art critic staring at a fine painting trying to form an opinion. Sam stared at it as well, their trains of thought however significantly different from each other.

"What do you think, Salvation Army or Goodwill?" Faith asked.

"Jesus Christ. You can't seriously be considering donating this," Sam said, frustration seeping through the words.

"And I will say it again, for the hundredth time, what am I gonna do with it?" Her own frustration matching his.

"And what are they gonna do with it?" He asked, stubbing out his cigarette. "You donate it to a museum, it ends up sitting in a glass case being stared at by 8th graders for the next hundred years. You keep it and you use it, who knows what you can find."

"I told you, I don't care about the money." She sat up straight, arms still crossed and head high, waiting for the argument that had erupted last night to continue. Sam strode across the room and sat down next to Faith on the little couch, arms resting on his knees.

"Faith," Sam started, a solemn, sincere tone to his voice, "I never thought I'd be saying this, forget about the money. Think about the adventure. Finding something that hasn't been seen or touched in decades. Something that the world had given up on but because of you, you get to show it to the world again."

Sam pulled the pirate coin out of his pocket, holding it up to Faith.

"You see this? Hidden for centuries." He flipped the coin to her, "And I was the one that uncovered it. You can't beat that rush, Faith. That book?" Sam pointed to the Bible on the coffee table. "You're the only one that has it, and you can't tell me you weren't goddamn mesmerized when Nathan told you what it was. I was there, I saw your face.

Faith's fingers picked at the dried cuticles on her thumb as she held the coin in her palm. A nervous habit she picked up as a teenager and never managed to shake. She really couldn't deny Sam's claim. It was true, the thought of a real piece of important history in her hands excited and energized her in ways she hadn't felt in years and the damn coin in her hand only seemed to amplify the feeling.

"Alright, let me ask you this, can you live with yourself if you don't find out why your mother had this? Personally, I couldn't do it. It took thirty years and two continents to get answers, but I got em cause I couldn't deal with not knowing," He said, surprised at his own admission of truth. Sam had never told anyone that before. As a general rule, it was easier to admit to greed than unfinished mommy issues.

Faith's looked at Sam, searching for any hint of a lie, a fib hiding in those hazel eyes just to play on her emotional side. The longer she stared at them, the more she came up empty and realized what he was saying was the truth.

"You only have to go over two states. C'mon, who doesn't like a road trip?" Sam asked lastly, every last card in his hand now played to try and persuade her, short of kidnapping.

Faith stared at the book blankly, her thoughts tumbling backward into her memories. She used to love taking road trips with her mom. Back in the days when gas was cheap, driving around, getting lost and singing at the top of their lungs. All the problems were left in the apartment and nothing mattered but the gas gauge and the adventure in front of them. It was always the two of them against the world, taking everything the universe felt the need to throw at them. But on those trips, the music, the speed and the vibrations of the road made them absolutely fearless. It had been a long time since she'd had one of those road trips.

"Can I see your phone?" Faith asked quietly. Sam fished it out of his pocket and handed it to her. She dialed Nathan's number from the contact list.

 _I'm sorry Ma._

Faith put the phone to her ear, listening to the ringing until Nathan picked up on the other end.

"Hey Nathan, It's Faith," she paused, Sam stared at her solemnly, completely certain that she was going to fold.

 _I hate that I have to take this trip without you._

"About how long does it take to get to Springfield from here?" After a moment she held the phone against her chest, "Think you can teach me treasure hunting 101 in nine and a half hours?" she asked a pleasantly surprised Sam, flipping his coin back to him. He caught it easily.

"I think I can do that."

Sam smiled as he watched the coin flip end over end between his fingers. He wondered what other surprises Faith and this book had in store for him.


	7. Paris Angel

Chapter 7

Faith glanced at the wall clock in her apartment. 4:35PM. Sam and Faith had agreed to meet back at her apartment by 5 PM, each of them had things to do and provisions to get before setting out for Illinois. Nathan had assured both of them Faith would be safe running a couple of hours of errands now that the Laginas had agreed on a ceasefire and Jasper Nox had seemed to have crawled back into whatever Georgia hole he crawled out of.

As she stuffed the last of her clothes in an oversized backpack, she heard the key in the lock of her apartment door. She glanced up as Sam walked in, swinging the metal door shut with a kick of his foot causing a loud thunk. Faith recognized the large green army duffel Sam set down on the couch from the motel room but not the smaller black one he put on top of it. Sam put a hand on the back of his neck, giving the tense muscles a rough squeeze and stretch.

"You get everything?" He asked.

She cinched the neck of her backpack closed and dropped it next to the smaller one on the floor.

"Snacks, clothes, cash, and Bible," Faith announced as she pointed to each backpack and her green army medic bag she used as her purse that sat on her bed. "How about you? You get everything?"

Sam unzipped the black duffel and threw a small flip phone at Faith. "Burner phone for you, burner phone for me. Sent Nathan the numbers already so we can get a hold of him. Each one has the others number programmed in that way we're set in case we get separated. Leave your phone here, pull the battery and the SIM card."

Faith nodded, storing the new phone in her purse and taking out her old one. She popped out the battery and SIM card, throwing the whole works on her bedspread.

"What else...whoa. Whoa. Hey now." Faith stammered as she turned to see Sam holding out a handgun to her.

"Wrap it in a shirt, throw it in your bag. It's just in case," Sam gently insisted. Faith stepped back with her arms wrapped around herself tightly, shaking her head no.

"Sam, no, I don't do guns."

"Take the gun, Faith."

"No, I don't do guns. I've never shot one, I don't like holding them, I don't like being near them. Nope, nuh uh. I don't do it," She said, still furiously shaking her head.

"You wanted treasure hunting 101? Here ya go. Lesson one, be prepared in case shit goes down now take the goddamn gun," Sam said with frustration. Faith reached out and carefully took it from his outstretched hand. She grabbed an errant gray t-shirt that was thrown over the back of her computer chair and wrapped it, taking great care to avoid touching anywhere near the trigger. She reopened her pack and nestled the gun in a hidden inner pocket and closed it again quickly.

"That it?" Faith asked Sam.

"Rental car's parked out back. Good to go?" He questioned. Faith nodded and grabbed up her gear, slinging what she could over her shoulders and headed towards her door. She shut it tight behind her and Sam, the click a little louder to her than normal, as if the universe was giving her signal, some subtle nod that it would be quite a while before she would be back and hear that sound again. Faith shoved the keys in her jacket pocket and headed towards the buildings set of elevators.

"You give the rental guy a fake name?" She asked as she walked down the hallway of apartment doors.

"Yeah."

"Justin Case?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Too obvious, Russell P. Bell."

"You really like the letter P for a middle initial don't you?" She questioned as she stopped in front of the elevators.

"Not really."

The elevator dinged, announcing its arrival as the doors slid open. "I bet it's your real middle initial." Faith said as she stepped into the elevator. Sam let out a chuckle, "No, it's not my middle initial."

Faith pressed the button for the main floor. She gasped, a thought striking her. "Your middle name is Phineas, isn't it?" She said as she looked at Sam, nodding with a goofy smile that made her look like she had just figured out a deep, cool secret of the world. Sam stared at her strangely at a complete loss for words as the elevator doors slid closed in front of them.

Sam turned the key to the small SUV, the engine kicking over and roaring to life. Their gear safely stored in the back seat, Sam put it in drive and turned out the gravel parking lot. Faith slid down a little in her seat, adjusting her seat belt snug across her chest. She watched Sam fiddle with the radio, scanning for a station across the FM band that came in clear. She slid her seat back and propped her feet up on the dash of the rental. "Better," Sam proclaimed, finally stopping his search as Creedence Clearwater Revival came through the surprisingly decent speaker system of the car. Faith cozied herself down against the door of the car, watching the world go by her in the mirror. She caught a glance of her apartment building. This was it, everything that was comfortable, every known in her life was in that building and she was watching it get smaller and smaller. She glanced beside her and saw her mother sitting in the driver's seat instead of Sam, John Fogherty's voice mixing in her head with hers and her mothers as they sang. Her mom turned to her and told her, "Sing out Faith! Don't be afraid. Be bold, be brave! That's where the fun is Baby!" A smile beaming at her as her mother leaped right back into the chorus of the song. Faith blinked, the sight of her mother replaced with Sam. He sang under his breath as he fished around in a jacket pocket for a lighter. She smiled and looked back into the mirror, seeing the last of her building fade out of her sight.

 _Be bold, be brave! That's where the fun is Baby!_

LYONS, GEORGIA

Jasper Nox sat perched with perfect posture on an ornate white wicker veranda chair. The screened in porch let the gentle breeze of the warm, humid day through while keeping out the pesky bugs that came along with it. The sprawling high society farmhouse sat on 75 acres of well kept land filled with corn, onions and peach trees. He held a well worn paperback in his good hand. Jasper had read this tawdry romance novel many times and each time he reread it, it became funnier and funnier with it's absurdity. Jasper considered all manner of romance and love absolutely ridiculous, it created unnecessary complications in one's life.

"Mr. Nox sir?" A man said as he approached Jasper, carrying a glass full of crushed ice and Dr. Pepper.

"Ah, thank you, Wallace!" Jasper said, setting his book down on the glass top coffee table in front of him. Wallace handed him the glass, making sure to put it in his fully functioning hand. Jasper took a sip, drops clinging to his red mustache. "Wonderful, wonderful," He muttered to himself in satisfaction and set the glass on a coaster next to his novel.

"Sir, I heard from our man we left on the ground. Victor Sullivan made it," Wallace said, trying to keep the undercurrent of nerves out of his voice.

"Yes, yes I heard. Unfortunate. Marty Lagina must be losing his touch. Well, a thorn in my side to be removed on another occasion. Anything else?" He asked, fiddling absentmindedly with the wedding band on his right hand.

"Sam Drake and the girl are on the move. They set out by car yesterday. Car rental agent didn't know exactly where they were headed, but Drake estimated the added mileage to be 500 for one way."

"And what do we know about the girl?"

"Faith Evelyn Spencer. 29. Cook with a Bachelors in Communications, only child, mother passed six months ago from kidney failure, no other living immediate family."

"Have Bixby look into this girl a little more. Nathan Drake might be a pompous wisenheimer but he knows his relics. If he says this girl has the second Lincoln Bible in her possession, I am inclined to believe him. I want to know who she is and how she came to acquire it before they do. Then, have him and his men head to Springfield," Jasper ordered Wallace in his southern Georgia drawl.

"Springfield, sir?" Wallace questioned.

"If you want information on Lincoln, you head to where the man was born and raised. Make sure he knows retrieving the Bible is the top priority. Bringing in Drake and the girl alive would be preferable, I do love a good bargaining chip, but tell Bixby it's not a necessity," He said, his instructions came across as a man talking to a toddler and not a middle aged man.

"Very good sir, will there be anything else?"

Jasper looked out the side of the screened in porch towards a large magnolia tree that preceded the acres of peach trees.

"The magnolia is looking a little peaked. Make sure Mrs. Nox tends to it. I think she's around the side of the house. That will be all Wallace, thank you," He said, taking his hand away from his wedding band and picking up his book again. Wallace left to find Mrs. Nox as Jasper straightened his back in his chair, smoothing his linen shirt down is large frame. He flipped open his book to the marked page where he left off. The hero was about to swoop in and rescue his lady love and proclaim his everlasting love any page now and Jasper was anxious for the absurdity to begin. A door on the side of the muted yellow house banged shut while Jasper flipped the dogeared corner of the book up and turned the page. Wallace pushed a wheelbarrow of dirt towards the magnolia, a small flowerbed surrounding it of cardinal flowers. Jasper's eyes flew over the lines of type with the expertise of a person that had read the book many times over. An amused smile spread across his thin lips and a gleeful chuckle came from deep in his barrel chest. His laughter grew as his hero professed his feelings for his love line after line. The silliness of how useless a feeling but yet how important it was thought to be. Wallace took a shovel and spread the dark fertilizer over the growing flower bed. Wallace took another shovel full out of the wheelbarrow, a small metal plate attached to the inside back wall of the tub. Inscribed on it was a name, DOROTHEA NOX, in perfect script.

Jasper continued to giggle as sipped his Dr. Pepper, stole a glance outside to the flowering tree. _At least my wife is useful_ , he thought gleefully and flipped another page forward in his book.


	8. A Girl Like You

Chapter 8

At 4:42 PM when Sam turned in, the parking lot in front of the Lincoln National Library and Museum was almost completely full. Elderly couples looking for a way to pass an afternoon and minivans full of parents looking to show their teenage kids pieces of history were scattered across the property. Sam piloted the car into a spot hid between two large pickups. Faith popped open the door and slid gingerly out of the passenger's seat as the transmission of the car clicked into park. She wasn't as used to long car rides as she used to be and despite the roominess of the SUV Sam had rented, her knees and back creaked as she got out of the car, the joints desperate for a good stretch. She wandered to the back of the car and leaned against the back bumper, feeling the tightness in her back. She leaned forward and hung her her head down towards the ground, giving her back a good stretch and crack or two for good measure. She heard the car door close and the crunch of the gravel under Sam's shoes. Sam approached the back of the car, rolling his head, giving his own joints a crack as well. As his head swiveled back around, he noticed Faith bent over, fingertips just brushing the top of the gravel stones of the parking lot.

"Stop staring at my ass!" Faith said from her bent over stance.

"Oh come on, how can I not?" He said, gesturing towards Faith with a flick of his hand. Faith straightened up and threw a look at Sam before she opened the back door of the SUV. She sincerely hoped he hadn't seen the grin that had started to form on her face. _Oh, Faith, don't go there_ , she thought as she grabbed her jacket from the back.

"It's not like waking up and finding yourself parked in front of a damn twenty-foot tall frying pan. Now that I could have done without seeing," Sam muttered just loud enough for Faith to hear as lit the cigarette that he had fished out from his pocket. Faith sighed as she slid on her denim jacket over her black t-shirt.

Sam and Faiths road trip from Buffalo to Springfield had been a low-key adventure for the majority of the ride. The road held minimal surprises while they drove and they passed the hours with stories. Their conversation was stilted and forced at first, Sam and Faith both feeling the need to fill the silence with some form of sound, some interaction to make the awkwardness less, well, awkward. After an hour of just the hum of the radio, Faith spotted a pasture filled with llamas near the edge of the highway as they drove by.

"Oh my god, LLAMAS!" She said excitedly. Sam let out a laugh, completely amused and absolutely relieved at her outburst. Sam knew that her personality was in there, he had seen it when she stole his shirt the night that they had met. If he had to drive for hours to look for treasure, _that_ was the girl he was looking forward to spending time in a car with. She had been so quiet since they set out from Buffalo, Sam's focus began to drift from Faith to the Bible in the back seat. His mind started to formulate a plan. Abandon his task of watching over Faith, taking care of her as a bleeding Sully had asked. _She's a grown woman, she can take care of herself. No one is out to get her. She don't need an escort_ , Sam thought to himself. Taking it and setting out on his own would be so much easier. Faith shouting out the word llamas had shattered that plan into pieces, swept them out the window and scattered them down the road.

"You know, I was in Peru once..." Sam started.

The stories continued to flow after that one and with each successive story, the tension between the two of them eased and the laughter grew less forced and more genuine. Sam told her about his hunt for Libertalia, Faith told him about the time she spent in college. After hours of driving, Sam's eyes began to droop, despite the frequent coffee stops and Faith took over driving through the rest of the night. Sam crossed his arms in front of himself and leaned back in the passenger seat. The constant low rumbling of the road soothed him to sleep within minutes.

Sam opened his eyes as the early morning rays of the sun hit his face through the windshield. The car was stopped and had been for at least a little while, the chill of the early morning air had already started to seep into the car. Sam squinted his eyes against the incoming light, confused at the scene in front of him outside. He swung open the car door and got out. He walked up the small path in front of him rubbing his hands together, blowing warm air in his cupped palms to loosen his cold, stiff fingers. Sam came to a stop next to Faith who was standing with her arms crossed in quiet contemplation in front of an extremely large frying pan.

"That an actual frying pan?" Sam asked, not sure he really believed what he was seeing.

"The world's largest non-stick frying pan actually. Just over fifteen feet tall, twenty if you include the handle," Faith informed him, still staring absently at the comically large pan in front of her surrounded by signs of pan related trivia.

"What the hell do you need a pan that big for?"

"To fry over 230 chickens for the town's festival to celebrate fried chicken," Faith answered. Sam approached it, stopping short of it as the smell of rancid grease hit his nostrils.

"Christ, that stinks!" He said as he held his hand up to his nose and backed away.

"25 years of grease buildup will do that," She retorted.

Sam ran a hand through his unkempt hair and looked around.

"Where are we?"

"Iowa."

"Iowa? We didn't need to go through Iowa."

"I took a little detour while you were sleeping."  
"How much of a detour?" Sam asked.

"About two and a half hours," Faith replied after a thought.

"You're shitting me, right? You drove two and a half hours out of the way to see a giant frying pan?"

"Yeah," She said simply as he continued to stare at her dubiously.

"Why the hell would you do that?" He said, his hands open in gesture.

"So I can say I've seen the world's largest non-stick frying pan," Faith said, completely amused at Sam's reaction to her wanting to see this mammoth roadside attraction. She turned and started walking backward towards the car, still staring him. "And now you can too! Your turn," she said as she flipped the car keys at him. Sam caught them easily in his already outstretched hand. He stared at her, shaking his head while she grinned at him. _Fuck, this girl is something else_ , he thought as he made his way back to the car.

"It was only twenty feet tall if you include the handle," Faith said as they made their way through the parking lot and towards the Lincoln Library. They stopped in the large park-like area that separated the two buildings with benches and flowering foliage.

"What's this guy's name again?" Faith asked after a couple of minutes had passed.

"Remington St. James. Curator of the Lincoln Museum and the Lincoln Collection at the Smithsonian," Sam answered, scanning the faces of the people wandering out of the Museum a couple of yards away from him.

"Just here now. I told Washington to eat me," A male voice said from behind them. Faith turned around. She expected a curator of all things Lincoln to be a stuffy old guy in his sixties, complete with tweed suit, elbow patches and smelling like moth balls. But this was a friend of the Drake brothers, and no one who is friends with a Drake is what you expect. Mr. St. James stood just below Sam's height, dressed in loose jeans and a maroon Dartmouth College hoodie. His naturally blonde hair was dyed a lime green and spiked and bright blue eyes accented his pale face. He also looked no more than twenty, the cherry on top of Faith's rocked expectations.

"Remy!" Sam exclaimed as he turned, pulling him in for a quick guy, pat the back once and release hug. "Holy shit, you got tall. Wait, that mean your balls finally drop?"

"Fuck off man," Remy laughed, pushing Sam away, a little heat of embarrassment creeping into his cheeks as he turned to Faith.

"Remington?" Faith questioned, still not sure how this can be the person they were waiting for.

"Remy. I'm only Remington on paper."

Remy held out his hand. Faith shook it, trying not to look as confused as she felt.

"Faith. Are we waiting for your dad or..." Faith trailed off as Sam snickered, stubbing out the last of his cigarette under his boot. Remy shoved his hands in the pouch of his hoodie and smiled.

"So, ok. I guess this ass hat forgot to mention that I'm 17. Well, you're _definitely_ old enough to remember Dougie Howser, right?" He asked though the tone of his voice implied he already knew the answer to the question. Sam grinned and held in a laugh as he saw the expression on Faith's face at the implication of her age. Faith nodded slowly, confirming Remy's assumptions. "Ok, it's the same thing with me, only instead of going into medicine, I went into history. Ok, c'mon I'm hungry. I could use a Cozy," Remy gestured towards the road behind Faith and strode past her. Faith turned and watched him walk away, still blown that this kid was a child genius and that he thought she was _old._ Sam walked up next to Faith and casually leaned down sideways towards her.

"Now that there, _that_ was worth seeing."

"Shut up." She said, knocking him in the ribs with her elbow before she strode off to catch up with Remy, who still walked with purpose in search of food. Sam laughed and followed close behind Faith.

"That look on your face was priceless."

"Quiet you."

"Much better than a giant frying pan."

"Shut up Samuel!"

Remy sat across the picnic table from Sam and Faith. They sat in the very back under the large awning of the drive in, giving themselves plenty of space and listening distance from the surrounding people. Remy held his third large corn dog in his hand, the discarded sticks of the last two on his tray of debris from the rest of his meal. Faith sipped casually at her second beer, taking the occasional onion ring from the plate next to Sam. For the last ten minutes, she had watched Remy inhale two massive corn dogs and a plate of fries all while giving her a detailed history of the corn dog, or 'Cozy' dog as it was originally called, she found out. Faith was sitting in the birthplace of the corn dog and Abraham Lincoln, she wasn't sure which one impressed her more.

"So, all those dudes at the State Fairs that say they invented the corn dog? Liars. Every single one of them. Without a stick, it's not a corn dog. We put it on a stick," Remy accented his points with the half eaten dog on his stick, waving it emphatically. A bit of fried batter flew off and bounced off Sam's chest and landed on the pile of napkins next to Faith.

"Oop. Sorry dude," Remy said while Faith chuckled.

"Uh Remy, Nathan said you could help us out here with Lincoln. Whatcha got for us?" Sam said, trying to wrangle his scatterbrain towards the topic at hand.

"Oh yeah!" He exclaimed, setting his skewered dog down and wiping his hands on the tops of his jeans. He stuck his hands in the large pouch of his hoodie and pulled out two stacks of paper, one thicker than the other. "This is the inventory for here and the thicker one is for the archive in Washington. Whatcha looking for?"

"Anything dealing with the Lincoln Bible. The one he was sworn in on," Faith said as she grabbed the thicker of the two stacks of paper and plopped the other in front of Sam.

"It's in Washington. Obama was sworn in on it," Remy said very matter of fact, the corn dog finding its way back into his hand.

"Not that one, the other one," Sam said, flipping through the pages of inventory.

"Not gonna find it. That shits long gone," Remy said, taking another bite. Faith flicked a glance up to Remy and then went back intently to the papers. Sam took an overly nonchalant, overly long sip of his beer. Remy, a teenager but not an idiot by any means, picked up on the forced silence immediately, the wheels in his head turning with furor. He set his stick aside and leaned in closer to them.

"No way, no. There's no way you got it! You don't got it. Nah...do you? Do you got it? You got it. Oh my god, you fuckin' got it don't you?" Remy's voice growing in volume with his growing excitement.

"Just-," Sam raised his hand, desperate for Remy to reign it in a little bit. "Just, cool it. I don't got it," He stuck his nose back in the pile of papers as Remy's face fell in disappointment.

"She's got it," He said off-handed, nodding his head towards Faith who twiddled two two fingers in the air for acknowledgment, refusing to look up from her own inventory paperwork.

Remy drummed the table with his index fingers rapidly, his excitement overflowing. He had known Nate since he graduated high school at 10. He was already researching his graduate school thesis and was told to get in contact with a Nathan Drake, that he was a wealth of 'hands on' knowledge. Back then he had a bright pink mohawk and a really shitty attitude. After three weeks of working with Nathan and hearing his stories, he knew he wanted to be just like Nate. He learned to be kind, fair, grateful, the foundations of a decent human being. He waited with baited breath every time he heard from him that Nate would want him to come on an adventure with him and every time Nate told him it was too dangerous. Now here is the other Drake with this crazy find! The possibility of going on an adventure with Sam had him downright giddy.

"If you got the book, why are you looking through my inventory for it?" Remy asked, reaching a hand towards Sam's beer. Sam saw the fingers coming towards his bottle and smacked Remy's hand away.

"It'll stunt your growth," Sam admonished him facetiously.

"We thought maybe there was another Bible or something else Mary Lincoln had that related to it."

Remy stealthily reached for Sam's beer only to have his hand slapped away again.

"Lincoln is your specialty, right?" Faith verified.

"Two doctorates and 13 published papers about him. And a direct descendant of the Lincoln Guard of Honor," Remy announced proudly, biting the last piece of corn dog off of his stick, reaching again for Sam's beer, this time to mostly aggravate him.

"No shit, really? I never knew that. Knock it off!" Sam exclaimed, tiredly swatting Remy's hand away again.

"What's the Lincoln Guard of Honor?" Faith asked.

"Ok, when someone tried to steal Lincoln's body in 1876, John Carroll Power, who was the caretaker for the Lincoln Tomb, took it upon himself to hide the body until a proper tomb could be built. That way no one could try and steal it again. He was one of only a handful of guys that knew where the body of Lincoln really was for almost 25 years. Not even Lincoln's kid knew. They were dubbed the Lincoln Guard of Honor. John Carroll Power was my 2nd great grandpa. See? Lincoln Guard of Honor royalty baby!" Remy said happily, popping a stray french fry in his mouth.

"I had no idea someone tried to steal Lincoln," Faith said after letting the story settle in her brain for a minute.

"Yup, pair of idiots, barely moved him a foot cause he was in a lead lined coffin and the stupid assholes had no idea so they gave up after like a half hour of trying," Remy explained, his hand coming up for Sam's beer again.

"Honor Guard royalty huh? Here your hein-ass, take this one, I'm gonna go grab myself another," Faith said, plopping the almost full beer down in front of Remy. She swung her legs out from under the picnic table and headed up between the rows of tables towards the service window. Remy grabbed the beer and took a couple of long swallows.

"Ya better now?" Sam asked, looking up from the inventory.

"Dude, you better keep her. I mean, she's like, awesome."

"Awesome? She gave you a half empty beer, not a blowjob Remy," Sam said, popping a smoke in his mouth and lighting it. He was outside and away from the buildings. _Screw the smoking laws_ , he thought, _it's more than good enough in my book._

"I know but dude, really, keep her. She really seems like good people."

"I'm not with her. I'm chasing the treasure and the girl just so happens to be the owner of an important item that could potentially lead me to said treasure," Sam explained to him.

"So you're using her."

"No, I'm helping her find what she wants to know."

"Dude, you are nothing like your brother."

"I know, Nathan never walked away with the treasure and trust me, I plan to."

"He might not have gotten all the treasure, but he got the girl."

Sam eyed Remy as he exhaled a stream of smoke out of his nostrils. There it was again. Nathan one-upping him. Even coming from a teenager it still gnawed at that deep, insecure part of himself he covered in a healthy dose of booze and denial. I walk away with no treasure, I lose. Nathan walks away with no treasure, he still wins. Yeah, Nathan had Elena, and she was great, but she wasn't worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And besides, he just wanted the treasure, he didn't want the girl. _Liar_ , a small voice in his head said.

"And like," Remy continued, "I know Elena, and she's really cool and all, but Faith is definitely cooler."

"How do you figure?" Sam asked as he concentrated hard on shaping the edges of the cherry of his cigarette on the corner of the table. Faith had made her way back to the table. She set another bottle of beer down in front of Sam as well as herself as she sat down.

"Figured you'd want another one," She said, moving the empties to the end of the table and away from their research. Remy looked at the fresh bottle of booze in front of Sam and then glanced up at Sam, as if the beer in front of him proved his point. Sam cleared his throat, mumbled a word of thanks and pitched the butt of his cigarette into the parking lot behind them.

"So, anything?" Faith asked as she put her hair up in a quick ponytail.

Sam shook his head in defeat.

"Remy, does your archive have anything personal from Mary Lincoln? A journal or day planner? Something of her sisters maybe?" She prodded, hoping against hope.

"Her sister? Elizabeth?"

"Yeah."

"Gimme that," Remy gestured at the inventories in front of both of them. Not waiting for them, he grabbed them up and began to flip through the pages, his eyes scanning quickly over the list of cataloged items.

"What do you got?" Sam asked anxiously.

"Elizabeth Edwards had a diary and she wrote in it all the time, up until she like, died. I know I've seen it. I know I've friggin' seen it!" Remy huffed in frustration and tossed the large inventory aside. He ran his hand down the pages of the smaller one, flipping through them one after another. Just before the last page, and as Faith's small glimmer of hope began to fade, Remy slammed his finger down on the page, pinning it to the table.

"There you are you fucker!" He exclaimed happily.

"You got it?" Sam asked eagerly.

"Nope, but now I know where it is," Remy said getting up from the table. He gulped down the last third of the beer Faith gave him and set the bottle down on the table with a slam. Sam and Faith followed suit and followed Remy who was already stalking back towards the parking lot of the museum at a brisk pace.

"Sam?" Remy asked.

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna need you to do something illegal."

Sam grinned at Faith, a swagger kick into his pace as he walked.

"Now we're talkin'," He said, stalking ahead, Faith at his heels.

A dark blue Denali with tinted windows sat idling in a far corner of the parking lot. A middle aged man with graying black hair and a square face watched the three walk across the parking lot. He rubbed a foiled gum wrapped between his fingertips, he snapped and cracked the pink piece of gum from it with his teeth.

He sat quietly, folding the pliable wrapper into a small cube. He set it on the seat next to him with the other twenty. A smartphone and a gun sat next to his growing pile of origami creations.

Bixby knew if he was patient they would show themselves soon enough.

He picked up the phone and dialed the Georgia based private number.

"I got 'em Mr. Nox."


	9. Centuries

Chapter 9

"Turn left here, here!"

Remy had led Faith and Sam back to the SUV and, with his directions, steered them to the other side of downtown Springfield, Illinois, close to the capital building. Remy directed Sam down a quiet one-way side street off the busy main road that held the bulk of the afternoon traffic. After passing a crumbling pay per hour parking lot, they approached a large, pale pink colonial house with green shutters and looking entirely out of place. It had a huge front porch complete with columns and a large community garden in place of what used to be the property's backyard.

"Here we go, pull around the back," Remy said, pointing between the seats.

"Ok, yeah, ok," Sam grumbled. He was never good at taking directions from people. Young, old, government authority, civilian, didn't matter, didn't like it one bit.

He pulled the car around the back of the large house, parking in what looked like a small gravel lot that was shared by the house and by the owners of the plots in the community garden.

"Remy whose house is this?" Faith asked, her nose to the window as she looked around. Sam put the car in park next to a pair of dumpsters shared by the two properties as well. Remy jumped out of the car excitedly, slamming the door behind him and rushing up the wheelchair ramp attached to the back door. Faith and Sam sauntered behind him, much like they had done since arriving in Springfield and meeting Remy.

"My god, he's like a puppy!" Faith exclaimed to Sam, leaning in close to him in the hopes that Remy wouldn't hear and be offended at her observation. Sam raised the corner of his mouth in a goofy, half grin.

"He's just a kid. You think this is bad; you shoulda seen him at 13 when he was just a pipsqueak."

Faith knitted her brows together in confusion. "Since when is 13 a pipsqueak?" She inquired.

"Since I hit puberty and became taller than the rest of the 13-year-olds in the world," He said coolly.

"You're an ass," She said half laughing.

"You're not just figuring that out, are ya sweetheart?"

They walked toward the back of the house where Remy waited impatiently. He stuck a hand into the pouch of his hoodie and pulled out a red gummy worm. He popped the end into his mouth, peering through side windows and staking out the immediate area around them.

"Remy, seriously, where the hell are we?" A tired note was creeping into Faith's voice as she asked again.

"This is the Edwards Place. Elizabeth went and married into this big powerful family. All her in-laws were like, Illinois big shots. Her father-in-law was one of the first Governors and Congressmen. He was Governor when it was still a freakin' territory. Her husband was attorney general for the state, and her brother-in-law's were all lawyers or something impressive like that. I still think it's funny that Elizabeth went and married into this crazy powerful family probably thinking, 'Oh I'm so great, look at me, I married the Attorney General.' and then her sister comes along and is like, 'Watch this bitch,' and goes and marries the president," Remy cackled wildly, the rest of his gummy worm now clamped between his teeth.

"Jesus kid," Sam said with a snarky laugh.

"Ok, cause all these famous Sand suckers lived here, they went and turned the house into like, a museum. Before they did that though, we had a diary from Mary Todd Edwards in our inventory. Then, once they opened up, the Edwards family proved provenance so they took possession of it and it got moved over here," Remy explained.

"So, let us in then," Faith said.

"I can't. If it's a historical state building, I got keys. This place is privately owned by some non-profit. That's where Sam comes in," Remy said, turning towards him as another gummy worm magically appeared out of his hoodie and into his mouth.

"Get us in? C'mon Remy, I thought you had a challenge for me!" Sam boasted. He backed away from the house and examined the outer structure, mentally trying to create a path from the ground to a window on the top floor that looked to be open a crack. He took out his coin and flipped it around in his palm, the Sam Drake equivalent of clicking a clicky pen over and over to help him think. Faith and Remy watched Sam curiously.

"They don't have a security system or nothin."

"Yeah ok," Sam replied, still staring at the outside. His coin was going end over end over his knuckles. He stalked to the dumpster and grabbed it by the edge, hoping to move it closer to the building.

"Sam."

"What?"

"You just have to pick the lock, you don't have to go all parkour dude," Remy said, glancing up the side of the building.

"It's ok, all I have to do is climb on top of the dumpster, jump over to the garage roof, make my way across those two window ledges, -" He explained until Faith's growing laughter caused him to stop.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Oh my god. You can't pick a lock, can you?" Faith asked, barely getting the question out before bursting out laughing again. Sam slipped his coin back in his pocket and crossed his arms in front of himself defensively, his dark green jacket pulled hard against his shoulders.

"Look, -" Sam started to explain, only to be interrupted again by Faith, who found this little tidbit downright hysterical.

"No way man, really?" Remy questioned, unable to comprehend this thought. Faith put a hand on Remy's shoulder, leaning her head against him for support during her fit of giggles.

"Alright, so I can't pick a lock. It's never stopped me. I still get in, and I always get what I came for. _Always_." He said with a smug look on his face. Faith regained her composure, wiping away the wet trails the tears from her laughter with the sleeve of her jacket. She turned and headed back towards the rear door of the house, her hand rooting in the inner pocket of her coat. She pulled a small, soft leather case from her jacket. Adjusting the back of her jeans, she squatted down in front of the door, her eye line level with that of the brass doorknob. Sam and Remy walked towards the door, curious about what exactly Faith was doing. Faith slipped two slim tools out of the lock pick kit and slid each one into the keyhole on the doorknob slowly. Remy watched her in a giddy amazement; he had never seen a lock actually picked before, there wasn't much use for breaking and entering in the field of academia. Sam crouched down next to Faith who was still intently working on the lock, gently sliding and turning the tools by the resistance she felt.

"You can pick locks?" He asked in a quiet voice, trying to keep his surprise tone to a minimum.

"A handy byproduct of a misspent youth," Faith said, wiggling the bottom metal arm.

"You've been holding out on me. Makes me wonder what else you know how to do," he questioned suggestively. Faith felt the bottom tool slip into place and turned them both at the same time. The door clicked as the lock disengaged.

"Wait 'til you see me with cherry stems," She whispered to him with a wink before standing up. Sam bit his bottom lip as a thousand pictures flashed in his brain, most of them downright dirty as sin. He ran a hand through his hair as he stood up as if it would help dissipate some of the thoughts in his head. Faith quietly turned the doorknob and opened it a crack.

"No one should be here, right?" She said softly. He shook his head no. Faith stood up and opened the door the rest of the way slowly, stowing her tools back inside her jacket. Stepping inside, she was still cautious of making too much noise. Sam followed close behind her with Remy on his heels. They entered what looked like at one point was a small mud room that looked to now be used as an employee entrance. Sam looked around the corner and up the back stairs towards the second floor.

"You know where the book is Remy?" Sam asked.

"Probably like a bedroom on the second floor in one of the displays."

"Ok, you stay here. Keep a look out for anything."

"What? Oh, come on dude!" Remy whined angrily, his face utterly crestfallen.

"Just stay here, alright?" Sam said, not really in the mood to embrace the teenager whiny attitude, even if it was coming from Remy.

"Fine...douche," He resigned sullenly, leaning against the hardwood frame of the doorway to the rest of the house.

Faith and Sam made their way upstairs, still taking care not to make too much noise. The stairway was lined with detailed painted portraits in dark wood frames of what Faith was sure was different generations of Edwards men. The top floor was all hardwood, crown molding, and flowered wallpaper. Things like ornate chairs and side tables were cordoned off by velvet ropes, as well as some of the bedrooms along the hallway that ran the whole length of the house. Sam ran a hand over a cherry table with grapevines carved into its sturdy legs.

"Hm, bet this would be worth a penny or two," His rough hand over the vines and shook a leg for good measure to check for stability.

"Hey! Focus, not what we came for!" Faith hissed at him.

"I know, I know, but it'd make a great parting gift," He said, already picturing its lot number at an auction.

Faith let out a sigh of disgust. _Bastard, money hungry bastard! And I flirted with him downstairs! What the hell is wrong with me, I should get my ass examined. Cause that's where my head is, square up my own ass!_ Faith thought as frustration with herself built within her head. _Nope, no more flirting. No matter how good he smells. Eyes on the prize, find the book._ She continued left down the hallway towards a large wardrobe at the end of the hall, open and displaying different pieces of period clothing. She stopped in front of the doorway to her right. Inside was a bedroom that looked straight out of the 1800's. Desk, sitting chair, bed, all look like they belonged there, despite the 'NO FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY PERMITTED' signs.

"Sam," Faith called for him. He walked down the hallway towards her, his heavy boots thumping against the runners atop the hardwood floor. Coming up behind her, he followed her into the room. She made a beeline for the roll top desk positioned in the corner of the bedroom, some part of her knowing what they were seeking would be there. The diary sat next to its own little placard, telling the interested masses what it was and who it belonged to. This was it.

Faith stood motionless, staring at the diary, frozen in place while a sudden internal conflict began to rage inside her head. _If I take this, I'm a thief; I'm a criminal. I know I already broke in, but this seems so much worse! This is outright theft!_

"Hey," Sam said, putting his large, strong hand on her shoulder, snapping Faith back to the moment at hand.

"Yeah?"

"You alright?"

"Yeah, just, I'm not a person that does illegal things."

"Says the woman with the lock picks," He said, his head tilted and hazel eyes staring at her accusingly.

"That was a long time ago, that was breaking into places for shits and giggles, this is theft!" Her voice whispered as if she was cursing in church.

"Well, it's a good thing I'm a thief then," Sam said back in the same hushed mocking tone while he reached past her and grabbed the diary from atop the desk. Faith watched as he closed the book and stowed it in the back waistband of his jeans and straightened his jacket over it, hiding it from view. With that quick move, it was as if the world turned from black and white to bright neon and everything was suddenly real. No more talking about it, no more just researching for kicks, no more 'just a simple road trip,' this was happening, and despite her momentary question of morality, it made her feel fucking fantastic and more alive than she had felt since her mother had died.

Sam headed back down the hallway, Faith on his heels. She felt exhilarated, but she was still anxious to get the hell out of there and not get caught. Remy looked up the stairway from the main floor where he had stayed put, despite his protests.

"Did ya get it?" He asked excitedly.

"Got it, let's go," Sam answered as he strode toward the door, ushering Remy and Faith out first. He closed the door, locked it behind him and stalked towards the car, trying not to draw any attention to the three of them if there was anyone around. As Sam unlocked the car, he pulled the diary from the back of his pants. He might not have the same anal need to preserve artifacts like Nathan did, but he figured sitting on it while he drove would not only be a bad idea but would be very uncomfortable. Sam handed the diary off to Remy's outstretched hands, sure that was the best place for it. Sam turned the key, and the engine roared to life. Almost euphoric at this point, Faith looked out her window, darting her eyes in every direction, anxious to make sure nothing looked hinky. The sun bright and reflecting off the puddles from the morning's rain, Sam sped out of the parking lot and down the one-way street, running over the cubed gum wrappers as he went by.

Sam skidded to a stop in front of the lobby of the motel chain they decided on to be their base camp for the night while they were in Springfield. Sam shifted the car into park and slid out of the driver's seat.

"Stay here, I'll grab a room," He said, slamming the car door behind him, causing Faith to give a tiny jump.

"For someone dealing in antiques, he's sure not very gentle," She muttered to herself. She pivoted in her seat towards Remy, who held the diary open in one hand and his phone in the other. A gummy worm as green as his hair hung crooked out the side of his mouth. The flashlight feature from the cell phone lit the diary, giving Remy some extra light as the daylight faded quickly underneath the growing clouds.

"How you doing Remy?" Faith asked.

"Pretty fucking awesome," He stated very matter of fact. He sucked the rest of the gummy worm into his mouth and smiled at Faith.

"Alright, the entries start in 1875. Mary died in 1882, and the diary looks like it goes til around like, June of the next year. That's when she lived with her sister so we should, hopefully, be able to find something."

After a few minutes, Sam walked out of the lobby with three room keys, handing one each to Remy and Faith as he got in the car. Parking in the far corner of the poorly lit lot, they grabbed their gear and headed towards the last room on the ground floor. Sam was pleased to see the room next to theirs empty as they walked over the cracked sidewalk; That meant more privacy, which was never a bad thing to have too much of. Faith opened the door with her keycard and flicked on the light. It had looked exactly as Sam's had the night she stayed with him, only this one had a couch and an uncomfortable looking high-backed armchair. Remy set the journal on the table and plopped down in one of its chairs, face still glued to the front of his phone. Faith dropped her backpack next to the bed and flung herself back on it with a sigh. She felt as if she hadn't had a decent sleep in days since she had found that damn Bible and the lack of a bed for the last 48 hours was starting to weigh on her eyelids and her back. She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumbs.

"Alright, food should be here in like half an hour," Remy announced, plopping his phone down on the table. Faith sat up and looked at him, puzzled.

"Didn't I just see you eat three corn dogs?"

"Yeah."

Sam's cell phone vibrated audibly in his jacket pocket. He fished it out quickly, double checking the incoming number. Nathan.

"And didn't you just eat a bunch of gummy worms?" Faith said, continuing her questioning. She glanced at Sam questioningly. He held up a finger and opened the metal door of the motel and stepped outside.

"I need real food, candy is like, just a food substitute. I'm a growing boy you know," Remy answered, the last thing Sam heard as he shut the door behind him and pressed green button on his phone.

"Hey little brother," He said holding the phone up to his ear while he rooted into his jacket pocket for his smokes.

"Hey, Sam. How you making out in Illinois? Any luck?" Nathan asked.

"Remy got us a starting point. We'll see where we end up."

"Keep him out of trouble alright? He's a good kid."

"C'mon, trouble? Me? Never," Sam said, exhaling a plume of smoke.

"I'm serious Sam. I heard Jasper still has Arthur Bixby sniffing around for you and Faith so watch yourselves. You remember what he's like, "Nathan warned him.

"Motherfucker," Sam muttered to himself.

"Gimme the phone," Sam heard a gruff voice say in the background on Nathan's end of the line. Sam leaned on beige metal railing that ran along the edge of the building, the cold metal biting into his forearms as he held the phone in place with his shoulder. He heard the phone being shuffled between parties. He waited patiently, smoking his cigarette while Nathan and Sully bickered, Sully finally winning with the phrase, 'Just hand me the goddamn phone!' Sam took one final drag of his cigarette, burning it down to the filter.

"Sam,"

"Victor," Sam said, grinding the butt of his smoke into the pavement with the heel of his dark gray boot. "Recouping at Nate and Elena's?"

"Believe me; it's not by choice. How's it going?"

"Alright so far, Remy got us somewhere to start."

"You heard what Nate said about Bixby?" Sully questioned, a hint of warning in his voice.

"Yeah I heard, I'll watch my back," Sam agreed half-heartedly. He still wasn't convinced that Jasper Nox would have anyone watching them.

"Don't bullshit a professional bullshitter Sam. You need to watch your back, watch Faith's back," Sully urged him.

"Why you got me lookin' out for this girl, Victor?"

"Cause I asked you to," Sully replied, hoping to shut him down quickly.

"Is she important, I mean, is she your kid or something? Why you got me doing this?"

"Sam, please, just do this one goddamn favor for me without asking any questions, alright?" Sully said as anger and frustration boiled over in him quickly.

"Alright, alright. I got it."

"How is she?"

"Faith? She's fine," Sam answered.

"She's fine?" Sully repeated accusingly.

"Yeah, she's fine. She's good." Sam assured him.

"Sam."

"What?"

"Don't do it."

"What are you talkin about?" Sam questioned.

"I'm talking about keeping it in your pants Samuel. That's what I'm talking about."

"Awe Jesus Sullivan, gimme a little more credit than that," Sam said,

"I'm serious."

"Okay," Sam said, making sure the sarcasm dripped from every letter.

"Leave this one alone Samuel, it won't lead anywhere good," Sully warned him; The words that he had already heard Sully say to him in his head, now hearing them aloud, sent a chill down his spine. _What the fuck is up with this girl_? He thought to himself.

"Alright, alright, Victor, I got it," Sam acquiesced. Sam looked across the lot, a small red sedan covered in rust puttered into the large parking lot, its sides plastered with magnetic signs of what Sam assumed could only be the local pizza joint.

"Gotta go. I'll be in touch."

"Watch yourselves out there."

"Will do," Sam said, snapping the phone closed. _First, it was take care of her; then it was protect her, now it's keep it in my pants? Fuck that; I promised one and two. I didn't make any damn promises about being celibate. You want me to take care of her? I'll take care of her, my way. The whole Samuel Drake package, full fucking service if the moment presents itself,_ Sam thought to himself smiling as he dug a small wad of cash out of the front pocket of his jeans.


	10. Games People Play

Chapter 10

Sam nudged the door open with his shoulder, two large, hot pizzas in his hands. He set them down on the table. Remy, eyes wide with the promise of pizza, reached for the boxes only to have Sam pull them out of his grasp.

"Hey!" Remy exclaimed.

"Twenty bucks," Sam said, holding out his hand.

"You don't have any cash?" Remy questioned skeptically.

"Not enough for the beer that I want to go along with my pizza. C'mon, cough it up" Sam replied, wiggling his fingers anxiously for the money.

"Fine," Remy sighed, dug two tens out from the pocket of his jeans and slapped them into Sam's outstretched hand.

"Perfect. I'll be back in ten. Don't eat it all."

Sam closed the motel room door behind him, making sure he heard the click of the electronic lock engage. Remy sat back in the wooden chair and poked at his phone as Faith emerged from the bathroom.

"Where'd Sam go?" She asked as she flipped off the bathroom light.

"Beer run."

"Ah," Faith exclaimed and pulled up a chair next to Remy.

Remy sat his phone down and pulled the journal in front of him. He sat silent for a second, staring at the brown canvas book bag that Faith had thrown on the bed.

"Hey Faith, can I see the Bible?" Remy asked meekly, sounding like a child asking for a cookie before dinner.

"Oh yeah, sure," She replied as she slid her chair back across the floor. She stretched her arm out and grasped one of the straps of her pack with her fingertips. Faith sat the book bag in her lap and fished out the wrapped Bible and placed it in front of him. Remy let out a deep breath, cracked his neck and shook out his hands, looking like a fighter readying himself for battle. He gingerly unwound the book from its protective blue towel, placing it gently on top of it. Remy wiped his hands on his dark jeans and shook them out one more time. He opened the cover and slowly turned the pages from the upper corners, soaking up the look of the typeface, the feel of the paper. His expression was one of complete awe as Faith watched his face intently.

"You really love this stuff, don't you?" Faith asked.

"There is a piece of history sitting in front of me. Abe Lincoln had his left hand on here and swore to protect his country while the guy that planned to kill him stood less than a hundred feet away from him! Everyone thought for years that this book was lost to time, and here it is, it's amazing," Remy marveled at the book in front of him, making him sound much older than the childlike exuberance he showed earlier.

"I get that."

"So how did you end up with it?" Remy questioned. Faith sighed quietly and smiled. She was beginning to hate this question.

"I found it in with my mom's things after she died."

"Oh. Oh, uh, I'm sorry," Remy said with his eyes downcast. He chewed on the corner of his nail as red crept up into his face. Death obviously made him uncomfortable.

"It's alright," Faith lied. "I just really want to find out why my mother had it cause I have no idea how the hell she could have ended up with it. What kind of pizza did you get?" Faith asked as she lifted the lid of the top box and peered inside, inspecting its contents and changing the subject simultaneously.

"And you asked Sam to help you?"

", I asked Sully, who asked Nate and I somehow ended up with Sam," Faith shrugged.

"You guys make a good pair," He said.

"Oh no, no, no. there is no pair here," She said, shaking her head emphatically. "Sam is in this for the money. I don't care if we ever find it, I just want my information and to go home."

"Oh, come on! You're on this amazing adventure that could lead to like, one of the sweetest treasures that America didn't even know fucking existed, and you don't care if you find it?" Remy exclaimed animatedly.

"That's not my life Remy. I don't do grand adventures," She said, leaning back in her chair, staring at the Bible that was laid out in front of Remy.

"After you broke into the Edwards Place today when you and Sam came flying down the stairs with this journal and out the front door? You were grinning so hard. You looked like, so fucking happy. Maybe you didn't do adventure then, but I think you do now and I think you even really, really like it," Remy said, grabbing the top pizza box, his teenage appetite getting the better of him.

Faith silently pondered Remy's observations. He was a kid, but not a stupid one by any means.

"Also, you can pick locks, which even Sam can't do, which is wicked cool," Remy stated as the room door beeped and the lock disengaged. Sam opened the door, a six-pack in one hand and another clutched under his arm.

"What's wicked cool?" Sam asked him half-heartedly as he closed the door and engaged the deadbolt.

"The fact that Faith can pick locks and you can't," Remy teased.

"Bite me, Remy," Sam said, setting the beer down on the table. He handed an amber bottle from the cardboard case to each of them. Sam twisted the top off his own, the beer bottle letting out a low hiss.

"Alright boys and girls, time to get to work."

Five hours, one and a half large pizzas and two six packs of beer procured from the corner gas station later, Remy was still deep in research mode. He held the knotted end of his hoodie string between his fingers, gnawing at the plastic tips, permanently dented with the impressions of his teeth. The diary was open in front of him, the page held in place with his cell phone while he scribbled notes onto the cheap motel stationary he had found on the table. This is what he had always excelled at, research. Long nights alone in a library or a room surrounded by books. American history had never lent itself much to fieldwork and the thought of being able to make an actual discovery instead of just reading about it in a book made Remy downright giddy.

"How long was I out?" Sam groggily asked from the bed across the room. Remy clicked the pen in his hand as glanced at the time on his phone.

"Only like an hour or so," Remy answered him, string dangling from between his teeth. Faith had been the first to pass out. She was already tired when they got in, and after a couple of beers and slices of thick, warm pizza, she had fallen asleep sitting up on the edge of the bed, her chin resting on her chest. Leaving her be, the boys had both thought it best to let her sleep. Sam had made it longer than Faith, but not by a lot. He sat on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, boots kicked off to the side. With one hand crooked behind his head and one resting on his stomach, Sam assured Remy that this was his 'Thinking Position' and closed his eyes to mull things over. Sam was asleep less than five minutes later.

Remy had continued to work while Sam and Faith slept, his 80's pop playlist playing quietly from his phone to keep him company and muffle the sound of an unmoving yet noisily, sleeping Sam. Faith had migrated all over the bed and finally settled with her head resting on Sam's thigh, using it as her own personal muscled pillow while her arm was draped over his lap. Sam yawned and cracked open his eyes. He glanced down at Faith, still deeply asleep and obviously comfortable; A small, dark patch had already formed on the leg of Sam's pants, damp with drool. Sam snorted a low laugh and gently slid away from Faith's grasp. He lifted her arm and pushed a pillow in his place. Sam took his smokes from the nightstand next to him and lumbered over to the table, sitting down stiffly in the chair by the window.

"So, where are we?" Sam asked, lighting a cigarette held between his lips.

"You want the short version or the long version?" Remy asked Sam, letting the string of his hoodie drop from his mouth as he downed the last remnants of his now warm beer.

"Short, please," Sam said as he cracked the window open behind the edge of the dark drapes.

"Ok, you know Mary Todd Lincoln, lost her shit after Abe died, right?"

"Yeah, Nathan said something like that," Sam said, remembering the night he first saw the Bible, the night this whole adventure had started.

"Well, according to her sister, she started collecting and saving everything with Abe's handwriting on it, like letters, speech notes, even like fucking grocery lists."

"Abe Lincoln wrote a shopping list?" Sam asked skeptically.

"You know what I mean. She kept everything."

"Yeah, we knew all that," Sam said, glancing out into the parking lot, unimpressed with what Remy had found so far. _Maybe this is a dead end. Well…shit._ Sam thought.

"Did you know that Samuel Mudd came to visit Mary Todd in 1877?"

Sam blew the last bit of smoke out the cracked window and turned towards Remy in surprise. This was news to him.

"You're kidding me. What for?"

"To ask for forgiveness for his part in Lincoln's murder," Remy answered as he took a red gummy worm out of the pocket of his hoodie and rolled it between his fingers.

"For fixin' up Booth?" Sam asked. Remy nodded affirmatively.

"You wanna know the _really_ fucked up part? They became friends before she died. _Friends_ , can you believe that shit?" Remy said excitedly.

Sam tapped Remy on the arm and gestured towards Faith, who had stirred a little and mumbled what Sam was pretty sure was the phrase, 'This isn't my exit' in her sleep. Remy stuck the end of the gummy worm in his mouth, letting the other end dangle free, his version of a teenage pacifier. Sam stubbed the end of his smoke out in the ashtray and slid his chair closer towards Remy.

"How do you know this?" Sam questioned in a hushed voice.

"It's all here in the diary. Let's just say her sister had a lot to say about it and none of it was good."

"Her sister mention anything about her hoard?"

"According to this, Mary also got crazy paranoid. Even though she was married to one of the richest fucking guys in the state, Mary still thought that Elizabeth was like, trying to steal her money. She didn't want her making money off her "treasures" so she hid them in the house. Some sort of metal container cause her sister wrote about hearing, 'the tinny thunking of the lid as Mary closed it'. Let me tell you, after reading this; Mary Todd Lincoln had one nosy, bitchy, long-winded sister," Remy stated as he finished his gummy worm, holding up the diary in his hand.

Sam had mostly stopped listening after 'metal container.'

"She kept it in the house. That was 1877, almost a hundred and fifty years ago," He said, mostly talking to himself as he played with the coin he had fished out of his pocket, spinning it on its thin edge on the table.

"A house that I'm sure is long gone and now a goddamn McDonalds," Sam finished sourly and felt defeated. He let his coin come to a stop on its side and with a flick of his index finger, it landed with a flat thud face down on the table.

"You know, you _would_ think that, wouldn't you?" Remy said dramatically. Sam looked up at Remy who was now giving him a rueful smile.

"Son of a bitch. It's still standing?" Sam asked unable to believe it.

"There's not a ton to it anymore, but it's not a McDonalds," Remy grinned excitedly. A red film on his teeth along with red stains on the edges of his lips from his gummy worm stash reminded Sam of a 6-year-old Nathan after Sam had swiped him a popsicle from the corner store.

"How far is it?" Sam questioned.

"Maybe like, 20 minutes away. It's all overgrown woods now. The property around it never got developed. So, do we go in the morning or should we go now?" Remy asked excitedly.

The youthful enthusiasm and the vivid memory of a young Nate caused the phone conversation with his brother from earlier in the night to replay in his brain. Sam cast his eyes down at the table.

"I think maybe you should hang back for this part, Rem," Sam said in as gentle a voice as he could. Remy's brow knotted in confusion.

"Why?"

"Nate thinks Faith and me are being followed."

"By who?"

"Someone working for Jasper Nox."

"Holy shit, really? Dude, that's the guy that got me fired in Washington!" Remy exclaimed.

"I thought you quit?"

"I didn't say I quit; I said I told them to bite me…which I did after they canned me," Remy conceded, slouching back in this chair, stuffing his hands into the pouch of his hoodie.

"Why'd he do that?" Sam questioned.

"Guy went and bought himself onto the Smithsonian Board, found out I was in charge of the Lincoln Collection and then told me that, 'a young whippersnapper such as myself wasn't up to the task of looking after such a priceless collection, this wealth of information'," Remy drawled dramatically, mimicking Nox's accent. Sam snorted a laugh.

"Seriously Rem, I don't want you gettin' into a tight spot if things get nasty," Sam said.

"I know. But man, I have known Nathan for years. Every time he calls and hits me up for info, I hope so bad that he will ask me to come with him. Then you came around, and I thought, "Two treasure hunting Drake brothers! Double the chance for adventure! Fuck yeah!" Nothing. This is the closest I've come to going on an adventure with a Drake, to being out in the field with history. And let's face it, this shit is tame compared to some of the people Nate has dealt with. C'mon Sam, let me tag along for this. Please?" Remy pleaded.

Sam shook a cigarette out of his pack and gently tapped the end on the table, flipped it and tapped the other end. Flip and tap, flip and tap while he mulled it over in his mind.

"Seriously, it'll be fine! Nobody knows where were going, what we're doing. We haven't seen one hint of being followed so far. Nate is probably just being like, over cautious. Plus, you're Samuel Drake, who's really gonna fuck with you?" Remy argued, trying to appeal to Sam's ego. Sam stood up and went to the edge of the window again. He lifted the edge of the drape and scanned the parking lot, this time more thoroughly than earlier when it was basically just a force of habit that had never gone away. Nothing noteworthy had changed from before.

Sam lit his smoke and leaned against the frame of the large window, arms crossed over his chest. He didn't want to get this kid in trouble. _But there's no sign of anyone. And what the hell would Jasper Nox be doing following us anyway? Nathan's just over cautious cause that's what Nathan does now. Besides, he'll be fine cause he's with me._

"Yeah, alright," Sam finally acquiesced.

"Sweet! Man, this is gonna be great! I bet we find something! Something big!" Remy chattered excitedly.

"Let's hope so," Sam replied as he exhaled a plume of smoke.


	11. White Noise

Chapter 11

Sam turned down the gravel covered side road off the rural highway. Remy sat next to him, acting as navigator while Faith watched the journey from the back seat.

"How come this isn't developed?" Faith asked as she stared out the window at the overgrown fields and packs of maple trees that passed by.

"Not 100% sure. I'm pretty sure it was some sort of like, land deal that went wrong. I remember hearing on the news a couple of developers were going to court about it. Guess it got stuck in arbitration. Turn off here and park it."

Sam pulled the car over into the small dirt recess. Indentations in the ground showed evidence of what could have been an old road, but thick overgrown weeds showed its lack of use for years. The hidden path ran through an easily ten-acre sized patch of woodland, which gave them at least a direction to follow through the trees.

Sam piloted the car off-road and parked between the large maples that made an entrance into the wood to give the car at least some cover, the last thing they wanted or needed was to deal with a bored cop. Remy slid out of the car with his face fixed on the screen of his phone. Faith got out and stood next to him along with Sam, who was already digging into the pocket of his coat for his cigarettes.

"Alright, so if this is right, we just follow this old trail for a couple of hundred meters, and we should be able to see it," Remy said, tapping at the face of his phone before he stuffed it into the front pouch of his hoodie.

"I'm surprised you've never been out here before, Rem," Sam said out of the corner of his mouth as he brought up his lighter to light the smoke that hung between his lips.

"The Edwards were a bunch of snotty, stuck up, douchebags, and that's really all I needed to know about them for my research. Dude, do you know you smoke like a chimney? Seriously, is it like you just don't care or what?" Remy asked as he stared at Sam. Sam scowled, the smoke from his cigarette drifting lazily up into the air in front of Sam's face.

"Look, this is one of life's simple, little pleasures I happen to enjoy. Just let me smoke myself to death in peace if I want to, alright?" Sam said as he turned on his heel and started to head through the brush.

"Just remember Smokey-" Faith piped up from next to Remy, "Only _you_ can prevent forest fires!" She said in a full, bear-like grumble. Sam shot her a look over his shoulder.

"Strange girl. Strange fuckin' girl," Sam muttered to himself under his breath, a hint of a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as he ducked under a low branch.

Faith and Remy kept pace a couple of feet behind Sam as the three trekked through the woods. The mid-morning sun cut through the trees, shining bright spots on the ground ferns that covered their path. Though warm in the sun, the shade of the full treetops and the accompanying west wind that weaved its way through the woods made it seem much colder. Remy flipped the hood of his sweatshirt up over his neon hair and tugged it into place.

"So do we have any idea what were looking for?" Faith asked Remy as she maneuvered over a fallen tree.

"Well, I'd say some sort of metal box judging by what the diary said. Probably on the small side too so Mary could hide it," Remy answered as he vaulted over the log.

"Alright, what do you think our chances of finding it are?" She asked, not really sure if she wanted to hear the answer.

"Seriously, I think not bad. Everyone thought everything was destroyed, so no one is gonna come out here looking for anything. I think we have a shot. Gummy worm?" He held out a bright orange gummy to Faith.

"Sure," She chuckled as she took the lint covered worm from him. Faith admired his youthful enthusiasm but kept the hope she had inside in check. She always felt hope was good to have but a dangerous thing to have too much of. Faith spotted a decaying structure not too far in the distance and felt her heart beat a little faster with excitement. She hadn't completely believed Remy when he said the building was still standing.

Faith tapped Remy on the shoulder and pointed to the building between the trees.

"Holy shit, that's it!" Remy shouted and took off like a shot through the underbrush. Sam and Faith picked up their speed, zig zagging through the woods as quick as they could without ending up with a twisted ankle.

The house, what was left of it, stood toward the back of a clearing full of tall grass. The structure still stood its original two stories high, on the right side at least. The right portion still had most of its wood attached, helped by the stone chimney that ran up the back right corner of the house. The paint had weathered away mostly, the few chips of paint that were originally a light yellow were now sun-bleached to a dull white. The left side, which looked like took the brunt of the Illinois rainfall, had decayed away many pieces of the outer wall and caused the whole left side of the building to sag, making it look almost as if the house had had a stroke. The framing of the few windows had remained intact, although the glass from them was long gone. What Faith assumed what was once the front porch and porch roof sat in front of the house, now nothing more than a pile of rubble.

The three of them stood in front of the house, each feeling a different emotion at that moment. Sam stubbed out his smoke under his boot, careful to grind it down enough into the ground.

"Alright, let's do this." Sam said, exhaling his last stream of smoke, "You guys check out the ground floor, I'm gonna head upstairs. Check out the bedrooms, see if there's anything up there."

Faith glanced through the doorless entryway into the house and saw the rickety condition of the central staircase.

"And how exactly do you plan on getting up there? Because I don't think those stairs are gonna do it," She said, gesturing towards the stairs inside the house.

"Never planned on using them anyway," Sam replied and headed around the edge of the house where a large, rusty clothesline pole stood in its original shape of a giant letter T. Sam grabbed the center pole and tried to give it a shake, testing its stability. It's lack of movement satisfied Sam well enough. Sam reached up, grabbed the crossbar and pulled himself up in one smooth, fluid motion. He swung his legs up onto the bar and positioned himself in a deep squat as he hung onto the crossbar that held him.

Faith and Remy came around the edge of the house to see Sam squatting on top of the bar, intently eyeing the blown out window on the house ten feet away from him and just as high in the air, probably higher. Faith's mouth dropped open in disbelief.

"You have got to be shitting me. You're kidding, right? There is no way this is safer than the stairs!" Faith yelled at him.

"It's fine! Watch," Sam shifted his stance a touch wider, and after a moment to ready himself, he sprang forward and up like a jumping frog. His long body shot forward, and he outstretched hands grabbed the upper frame of the window with ease.

CRACK!

"Oh shit!"

The wood in Sam's hands suddenly gave way from the building. Sam dropped, his arms landing hard on the bottom of the window. The piece of timber from the upper frame still in his hands cracked and splintered into a dozen pieces that rained down the side of the house as Sam clumsily held on to the bottom of the windowsill. Kicking his toes into the side of the house, he pushed himself up and through the opening with an awkward tumble. Sam stood up and leaned out the window.

"See? Nothin' to it," Sam said as he brushed bits of splintered wood off his gray long sleeve shirt.

Remy, who had watched the quick sequence unfold with the excitement of a ten-year-old watching a blow 'em up action movie, complete with gummy candy, nodded with a smirk of impressed approval. Faith, whose stomach had dropped when Sam had, stared at him and shook her head, holding her forehead in her hand.

"You're fucking nuts; you know that?" Faith scolded him, even though a part of her thought the whole move was pretty impressive and kind of hot if she was being completely honest.

"I'm nuts?" Sam scoffed at her, "I got two words for you sweetheart; frying pan. I'll meet you guys downstairs."

Remy and Faith headed back around the front of the house and climbed carefully over the debris that was once the porch and through the front door. They stood in what was once the small foyer and took in what remained of the interior.

The inside hadn't faired much better than the outside. Parts of the roof and the top floor were obviously missing from the left side. Pieces of old shingles and plywood lay atop the floorboards of the main floor which were mostly twisted and warped from the rain that had come in over the years. The wallpaper had long since peeled away. Only dusty scraps clung to the bottom of the walls. The exposed plaster gave the inside a hazy look, and despite the gaping hole in the ceiling, the inside of the house seemed dark.

"This place looks like the Blair Witch used to live here," Remy said as he pushed his hood back down and gave his green hair a quick scratch. Faith shot a look at Remy; his observation caused dread and trepidation to run through her suddenly like a cold river.

"What? C'mon! Seriously! Put handprints on the wall and a dude in the corner and it's some straight up Blair Witch shit!" Remy concluded as he fished another gummy out of the seemly never ending supply in his hoodie. Faith took the squiggly red worm out of his hand and roughly ripped a piece off with her teeth.

"I'll take the front rooms, you take the back ones," Faith decided, and the two began to head in their designated directions.

"Oh, Remy?" Faith said, stopping suddenly and turning to him.

"Yeah?"

"If you try to sneak up on me or startle me or anything like that, teenager or not, I will kick you in the nards. Fair warning," She said calm and directly, emphasizing her words with the decapitated candy in her hand. She popped the rest of it in her mouth and stalked off towards what was once the parlor room. Remy shrugged and headed down the hallway towards the back.

All three hunters scoured the rooms of the house. Floorboards were pulled at, bricks of the chimney checked and rotted cupboards torn apart to find nothing but cobwebs and a rat nest. Squatting down in her jeans, Faith checked the foundation of the chimney last, finding nothing but old soot and remnants of broken beer bottles, probably from partying kids. She let out a defeated sigh and stood up. Wiping her hands on the legs of her dark green pants, she headed back towards the front foyer of the house.

"How's it going, Sam?" Faith yelled, brushing her hands on her denim jacket. Several seconds of silence passed. Faith moved to the bottom of the stairs.

"Sam!"

Nothing.

A small sense of worry crept into her brain. She didn't like this. Faith inspected the decrepit staircase in front of her; there had to be a couple of solid spots. She made her way up the stairs carefully, testing her weight with each step she took. After a dozen delicate steps, she was finally on the first floor. A long hallway ran the width of the house. She turned to follow the stairway again to find the rest of the staircase that leads up to the second floor a twisted, broken mess. There was no way she was getting up there.

"Sam!" She called again.

Again, nothing.

 _Fuck,_ Faith thought, _I don't like this._ Her sense of worry started to build. Faith checked the right, more intact side of the house. The rooms were devoid of furniture, thanks to incoming clouds devoid of light and devoid of Sam. Leaving the last room on that side of the house, she stalked back down towards the crumbling left side. The hallway ended abruptly with a large hole in the ceiling down to the main rooms below. Faith inched her way to the edge. When she looked above her, she could see the second-floor hallway was rotted away even more, which left an open cloudy sky directly above her head. And still no sign of Sam.

Anxiety began to build in the base of Faith's spine. She had checked everywhere… Except down the hole in front of her. _Please don't let him be dead. Please, I can't deal with another dead body. I can't deal with any more death._

Faith stood at the hole's edge; her eyes fixed straight ahead while her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. An image flickered in her brain. Sam laying on the rubble at the bottom, body twisted and neck broken.

Her heart began to beat faster. Another image joined. Sam's lifeless body impaled on a twisted piece of rebar. His jacket stained a dark red and clotted blood in the corner of his mouth.

A layer of sweat bloomed over Faith's body, her breaths now coming quicker and shallower. Another picture joined the party in her brain. This one was simply of just Sam's head. His already unkempt hair was now ratty and speckled with plaster. His hazel eyes, those dark, mischevious and lively hazel eyes, now bloodshot and lifeless. The eyes from his severed head stared directly into hers.

The anxiety crashed over Faith like a tidal wave, and her body began to tremble. Her imagination had one more picture to show her. One more trick up its sleeve. Faith suddenly saw her mother, laying in her hospital bed. Her eyes were half open, her mouth slightly ajar. The final gasp and her chest was still. Her mother was dead.

Faith slammed her eyes shut and backed away drunkenly from the edge of the pit. Full blown panic had set in.

"SAM!" She called his name with everything she had, one last effort.

Thunk.

Sam landed in front of Faith from the floor above as she opened her eyes.

"What didya find?!" He asked excitedly.

"You fucker!" She spat, shoving him hard in the chest with her clammy hands.

"Whoa!"

"Asshole! You scared the shit out of me! I thought you were dead!" Faith yelled, each word accompanied by a blow of an angry fist to the chest.

"Hey! Hey!" He said, grabbing her fist to stop her attack.

"Don't _touch_ me," Faith hissed as she pulled out of his grasp quickly, backing up to put space between the two of them. Sam backed up a step as well, his hands raised in defense and confusion. Mostly confusion.

"Jesus Christ! Faith, what the hell?"

Her fear and frustration had converted to white hot rage. She took a deep breath to center herself and bring herself back to Earth. _He's ok. No one is dead_ , Faith thought repeatedly.

"I've been calling your name. I couldn't find you," She said stoically, the waves of anger and fear starting to subside just a tad.

"I've been digging through a pile of shit and shingles that used to be the attic; it's the first time I've come up for air in a good twenty minutes, I didn't hear a damn thing!"

"Did you find anything?" Faith asked. She wanted to sidestep any questions about her outburst.

"Nothin'. You?"

"No," She replied, shaking her head. "I wonder if Remy's had any luck." Faith turned quickly and headed towards the staircase. She bounded down them as if they were as sturdy as boulders, running away from the possibility of a conversation.

Sam yelled her name but not in enough time. She had managed to hit the fourth stair before the wood gave out from under her. Her right leg fell through, her left knee slamming into the back edge of the next step down, causing the wood to splinter and break apart. Faith yelped and grasped the remnants of the railing, her feet flailing, searching for ground under them that wasn't there. Sam skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs as Faith kept trying to hook a foot up over the edge of the staircase. He stepped down the first two stairs, as far as he was sure the wood would hold him.

"Faith."

"I'm ok. I got this. Shit!" She exclaimed. The spindle on the railing she had managed to hook her leg around let go. Her legs kicked up and found nothing to latch on to, leaving her only to grasp the edge of the staircase.

"Faith look at me, look at me!" Sam urged. She managed to look up. Her usually calm, collected face now filled with a quiet panic.

"Gimme your hand. I'm gonna pull you up, alright?" He positioned himself as close as he could to where Faith had latched herself. Her legs still danced in the air, trying in vain to stay on any stable part of the staircase.

"Faith, gimme your hand. You don't wanna fall through the stairs and land on some shit the wrong way. I got you, you just gotta gimme your hand," He stretched his arm out to her. He could see in her face that her stubbornness, the independent streak in her was trying to win out with the help of physical ability, but that physical ability was starting to fade fast.

"Look, you don't gotta trust me until the end of time, just for the next ten seconds, think you can do that? Can you trust me?"

"Don't drop me ok?" Her voice wavered.

"Never in a million years. You just hang on to me and let me pull you up here," Sam said as he positioned himself, anchoring his left boot against the side wall, his other hooked under a solid piece of the stairs.

Faith nodded, reached out quickly, and grabbed Sam's wrist. She could feel the strength Sam had in his arms and quickly grabbed his arm again with her other hand. Sam grabbed hold of her other wrist and heaved her up onto the firmer top steps, dragging her back until her hips were clear of the opening. He let go of her hands, and she clambered up to the landing. Her heart going a mile a minute, she leaned against the side of the hallway as sweat ran down the sides of her neck.

"See? Told ya I had you," Sam said as he squatted down next to Faith and gave her a gentle poke in the shoulder. She slicked back the hairs that had come loose from her ponytail and wiped away the fear sweat and dirt on her cheeks with the heels of her hands.

"You alright?" He asked. The fresh rip in the leg of her jeans had already begun to turn a dark red while deep scratches bloomed on her arms and neck.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm good. Just…," Faith heaved a heavy sigh and let her head fall back against the rotting wall behind her. Sam cleared his throat dramatically after a few seconds silence. Faith lifted her head, a puzzled look on her face.

"The appropriate response after a situation like that is 'thank you,'" He chastised her jokingly. Faith rolled her eyes and snorted a chuckle.

"Thank you, Sam." She said with a sincere but weary smile.

"No problem. C'mon." He urged. Sam helped Faith up off the uneven floorboards. She took a couple of cautious steps. She hoped her knees hadn't been banged up too bad falling through the stairs. To her surprise and delight, besides the cuts and a little tenderness, her legs were in okay shape.

"I'm sorry I flipped out on you," She started, trying to formulate not only an apology but also an explanation for her seemingly random actions, "It's just-" Faith began to explain awkwardly, causing Sam to hold up his hand.

"No, uh. No. Don't. We're, uh… We're good."

Faith stared cautiously into Sam's hazel eyes. She didn't want to have to explain to Sam about the improbable, doomsday like scenarios that had formed in her head, the panic that set in at the thought of losing another person in her life, even a temporary one like Sam and how that panic and fear had turned to anger. Somehow, the caring, the fear, the anger, the frustration, everything that Faith thought she would have to say had been said, heard, understood and forgiven with Sam's simple, 'we're good.'

"We're good?" Faith repeated, seeking verification that she had _really_ understood him.

"We're good," Sam genially with a subtle nod of his head.

"Hey, guys! Come check this out!" Remy's voice echoed from the bottom of the empty house.


	12. Time

Chapter 12

Faith and Sam traversed the mangled stairs carefully, one of them falling through a staircase once in a day was enough for the both of them. Faith followed suit behind Sam and avoided the cracked bottom step by jumping over it and landing on the warped but sturdy ground floor.

"Where are ya, Rem?" Sam called out as he headed towards the back of the house with Faith in tow.

"Down here!" Remy's voice answered from seemly nowhere, "Head towards the back of the kitchen there's a door!"

Faith followed closely behind Sam down the narrow corridor that led to the back rooms of the house. Though there wasn't much left to it, it was still easy for them to distinguish which room the kitchen was. What cabinets there were left hung askew, doors open or missing altogether. An old iron stove sat against the wall, one of the few relics of the house to stay intact and unmoved. Debris of broken glass of old bottles and gum wrappers littered the corners of the kitchen. The butcher block that once stood square in the center had been reduced to a mangled mess. Years of abuse from the weather and dozens of initials encircled in hearts from puppy love fueled teenagers had turned a once solid piece of oak into little more than what looked like an eight-year old's pottery project.

Sam approached an alcove off the side of the kitchen, one he assumed used to be a pantry and just noticed the remnants of a thin door still barely on its hinges. If it weren't just slightly ajar, Sam probably would have never even seen it. He pushed the door open; the hinges squeaked in protest. Thrusting his hand into the pocket of his jacket, Sam fished out his lighter and flicked it to life. The flame illuminated the darkened pit in front of him.

"Remy?"

"Down here. Come take a look," Remy's voice came from the darkness below him. Sam held out his lighter, the light of his flame was suddenly joined by the harsh light of Remy's cell phone, illuminating the outline of his spiky hair and shoulders.

"Be careful coming down. You got a good like eight-foot drop down. I cleared a bunch of the wood away so you should be good just to hang and drop," Remy said as he positioned himself near the entrance to the basement to give Sam and Faith as much light as he could.

"Go ahead," Sam nodded to Faith. Faith climbed down and hung from the edge of the floorboard, her feet dangling down into the dark.

 _I'm getting real tired of hanging down off of shit_ , Faith thought to herself.

"You're good. You only got another like, two feet," Remy assured her from the basement floor. Faith let go and landed safely and steadily on both feet. Remy turned the beam of his light towards her. Squinting, she brushed off her hands on the sides of her jacket and fished her burner phone out of her pants pocket.

"Remy," Faith groaned, her hand raised as a shield. The light in her eyes made it impossible to see the cell phone in her hand, let alone the buttons on the screen.

"Oop, my bad." He muttered and angled the phone down. "Worm?" the gooey worm in his hand seemed almost backlit from the phones, giving the candy a cool green glow. Faith laughed and took it from him before she moved to the side to give Sam room to come down. Sam decided to forgo the hang and drop. He jumped down into the basement as graceful as a gazelle and landed with the sure footing of a billy goat. Remy shot him a sour yet envious look.

"Show off," Remy muttered under his breath.

"You know it kid," Sam said and clapped him on the back.

The basement reminded Sam of the attic space where the nun's kept the overflow of linens at the orphanage. The space was ten feet at its highest point and sloped down in front of them. The pockmarked walls completed the look like a wedge of Swiss cheese. Random containers and barrels were scattered around the basement, some even intact. Sam was pleasantly surprised. The rest of the house had been damn near empty and picked clean of everything noteworthy.

"Weird. Houses from this time normally don't have a basement," Sam questioned. He took his phone from his pocket, turned on its flashlight and flicked his lighter closed. Recharging a phone was easier than finding lighter fluid.

"These were rich people man, they could afford the stuff normal people didn't have, like basements I guess," Remy answered.

 _A feeling I plan on experiencing myself really soon_ , Sam thought as he gave a cracked pickling crock a nudge with his boot.

"I think there's something written on here," Faith said. She squatted down next to one of the intact small wooden barrels. She shined her light on it, brushing it off with her hand in the hope that the discolored writing would be legible. As she ran her fingers over the outside, she could still feel the indentations from the branding label under her fingers.

"What's it say?" Sam asked as he walked over and hunkered down next to her.

"I can feel the letters on there they're just too faded to read," Faith said, shaking her head.

"Here, do this," Sam grabbed her hand that held the phone light and moved it up, putting the writing in an angled spotlight, "It'll give you shadows sometimes, help you make out the letters."

Sure enough, small shadows had appeared under the symbols burned into the wood.

"Neat trick! What's that say?" Faith said, brow furrowed with concentration while she read. "Something artillery. US Artillery."

"Three. Third. Third US Artillery," Sam decoded.

"How would barrels from the army get down here?" Faith asked.

"No clue. You got any ideas, Remy?" Sam said, looking behind him.

"Uh, guys? I think I got something," Remy said nervously. Sam turned his light towards Remy who was hunched in the far edge of the space. As Remy walked towards them, Sam saw a small box in his hands. Faith got up and joined the boys, the writing on the barrels near her forgotten. She stood next to Sam, anxious to see what Remy had found. Faith shone her light on the object.

Remy held an object that looked to be about the shape of an oversized tea tin. The edges were metal and heavily rusted while the walls seemed to be made of glass. In half of the panes, spider web like cracks bloomed from the corners. The center of the top of it was raised metal, severely dented but still held up, allowing them to see that the inside of it was hollow. Sam and Faith stared at it, brows furrowed.

"What is that?" Faith asked.

"Looks like a weird coffee can," Sam offered.

"I think this is a lantern. Gimme more light so I can see the sides," Remy directed.

While Faith and Sam held their lights towards the box, Remy turned it over on its side to examine one of the intact glass panes.

"Is that who I think it is?" Faith marveled at the box. She reached her hand out and wiped the upright glass, letting bits of old dried mud and dust fall to the dirt floor. Barely recognizable was the thin face of a man with a full cropped chin beard and a high forehead.

"Holy shit, it's Abraham Lincoln," Remy breathed.

"That's gotta be from the stash, right?" Sam asked.

"I would think so," He nodded.

"Was that all that was there?" Faith questioned.

Remy nodded his head again. "They must have missed it when they cleaned the place out. I found it under some broken glass and another one of those barrels you were looking at," He pointed towards the other end of the room where Faith had been.

Sam took the lantern from Remy to take a closure look. He brought his light up close to the sides. He could see Lincoln's portrait adorned two opposite sides while another held a shield covered with the US flag and the words UNION is big, boxy and what was once black typeface. He turned it over in his hands. A sour expression crept into his face momentarily.

 _Thing's in horrible condition; it's probably not worth a damn thing even cleaned up_ , he thought. _Just hope the other shit is in better shape.  
_

"Okay, so found something. That's wonderful and all but it's the only thing we've found," Faith said, the truth of her statement annoyed the elation of the treasure hunt that Remy was feeling at that moment.

"But we found something! Maybe it will lead us to the rest of the stuff!" Remy rebutted.

"It's a lantern, Remy. It's not like it's a book or a diary or something, it's not gonna tell us anything," Faith argued.

"You don't know that! Maybe there is a record of something in the archives or somewhere or.." He trailed off as he saw Faith shake her head in defeat. "C'mon! We can give up hope now! It's out there, somewhere! We can't stop looking now! We can find it!"

Sam, who had been otherwise occupied during this exchange, removed his fingers from their twisted position inside the lantern, a small folded piece of paper clasped between them. As it passed in front of the direct beam of the light, Sam noticed the curves and loops of handwriting and began to smile.

"Ah ah, boys and girls," Sam tutted to get their attention. "We just might have something here after all," He held up the folded paper between his fingers.

Faith's eyes went wide.

Sam unfolded the piece of paper carefully. The thick leaded ink had kept well over the years along with the paper it was on. Sam held it and read it aloud while Remy and Faith provided anxious light with their phones.

 _My Dear Mary,_

 _I apologize for my delay of correspondence. I had hoped that this letter would find you sooner._

 _I have fulfilled your final request and have hidden your treasures well away from the predatory gaze of your sister and her monstrous husband. I ensure you that they will remain safe and in my custody. They will remain secret from you as well though I would be remiss if I did not at least leave you a small clue to their location in the event of my death. The barrel in which I leave this is all the clue you shall need._

 _You are a true angel walking amongst the people of this Earth. None but a pure angel could forgive me for the sins that I have committed against you, my fellow man and my country. I hold the Bible that you gave me on our last visit as the highest symbol of friendship and forgiveness that shall ever be bestowed upon me. Please know I hold our friendship most dear to my heart._

 _I hope this letter finds you well and in good spirits._

 _Sincerely yours,_

 _Samuel_

Sam let out a laugh of success. He grabbed Remy around the shoulders with a muscled arm and Faith with the other.

"Nice find kid! Nathan and I shoulda brought you out hunting with us sooner!" Sam said, rubbing Remy's green hair wildly with his hand.

"See? I told you I could do this!" Remy said, breaking away from Sam and brushing his hair back to his liking with his hand.

"I think we're gonna find what we're looking for after all, sweetheart," Sam whispered intimately in her ear and planted a wet, loud smack of a kiss on her cheek. A rosy blush broke out on Faith's face as heat ran up her neck to her earlobes, the spot where Sam's breath hit began to burn like wildfire.

Faith let out a small squeal of delight. She felt like they actually might be getting somewhere. Everything up until this point she felt everything was such a large maybe followed by another. Maybe there will be something in Springfield, maybe there will be something in the inventory, then maybe there will be something in the diary, then maybe there will be something in the house, and finally, maybe there is something in the box. This letter was her definitive yes. They had been on the right track all along.

 _Maybe luck is on our side after all Ma_ , Faith thought wistfully to herself, her excited grin subsiding into a small, sad smile. She looked over at Sam, who was busy getting an earful from an upset Remy about how the Drakes would have had more luck on their hunts if he had been along with them. Sam felt Faith's eyes on him and stole a quick glance in her direction.

 _Yup, I think luck is finally on our side_ , she thought, the sadness gone from her thoughts and her smile.

Arthur Bixby emerged from behind the large pile of wood and metal that used to be the stairs. A gun was in his hand.


	13. Old & Wise

Chapter 13

"Well isn't this exciting?" A voice boomed from behind the three of them, causing them to turn around quickly in surprise.

Arthur Bixby and two other men emerged from behind the large pile of wood that had once been the stairs down into the basement. His graying black hair atop his square face was peppered with sawdust. His navy blue polo shirt covered a small belly that was just beginning to spill over the waist of his khaki pants. The two men flanking him looked to be in better shape and better trained than their leader. While the two of them looked unarmed, Faith backed up slowly into the corner where she stood when she noticed a gun Bixby's right hand, amping up the fear that she had already begun to feel building within her.

"How ya doin' Arthur? Been a while," Sam said as he took an easy step forward. He wanted the focus on him, not the two by his side.

"About five years, Mr. Drake."

"See? Now that just isn't long enough for me. I need at least seven to recoup after starin' at your ugly mug," Sam said.

"Give me what I want, and I'll make sure you don't see me again for another decade," Bixby pointed to the note Sam held in his hand.

"Go fuck yourself," Remy sneered.

"Mr. St. James. My employer doesn't care for you very much, now I see why. Do you know we've been right there the entire time? Honestly, son, three grown men can hide well but not that well," Arthur tutted.

"You know, when something looks like a sack of shit, I usually don't pay too much attention to it. Seriously, you just like, blended right in," Remy quipped, trying to let his attitude override his fear.

"Remy," Faith cautiously breathed his name.

"Come now Miss Spencer, "Bixby chided her. The sound of her name coming from the man with the gun quaked Faith's core.

 _Sweet Jesus, he knows my name._

"I'm a reasonable man. I just want to get what I came for. Also, my condolences on your mother's passing. I was told she was a lovely woman," Bixby offered with an obviously fake sincerity.

Faith's cracked foundation broke with the mention of her mother. She had the sudden urge to do one of two things, scream like a wild amazon and pluck the eyeballs out Arthur Bixby's head or puke and pass out.

Sam saw the color vanish from Faith's face and he smoothly sidestepped in front of her. He put his hand on her arm for a brief moment mid-step and gave it a gentle squeeze. He chanced a quick glance at Faith, the momentary lock of their eyes willing her to stay calm, stay put, and stay alert.

"So, whatcha lookin' for Arthur? Porcelain doorknob? Antique gravy ladle?" Sam suggested.

"The Bible."

"Check your motel dresser, I bet it's even the King James version," Sam offered jokingly.

"Just make things simple and hand it over Mr. Drake, along with that note Mr. St. James managed to locate as well," Bixby said, raising his gun towards Sam.

"No," Remy said.

"Pardon me, son?" Bixby asked as he swung his gun in Remy's direction.

"Hey, hey, leave the kid alone and keep that thing pointed at me," Sam urged, attitude and edge seeping out of his voice.

"Then just hand over the Bible, and we won't have to things the hard way. Remember last time we had to do things the hard way? Do you remember what happened with Victor Sullivan and his boat?" He said as an amused grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah, you mangled that boat _almost_ as much as I mangled your bosses hand," Sam shot back, making Bixby's grin fall and his gun rise directly towards Sam's chest.

"Enough of this falderal. The note and the Bible, now," He commanded cooly with a slight step forward.

"Not gonna happen, Arthur," Sam said, stepping closer towards the muzzle of the gun, his hands raised defensively.

 _C'mon you son of a bitch, keep talkin'. One more step and your gun's as good as mine_ , Sam thought to himself, ready to spring towards him at any moment.

"Alright then," Bixby said simply and with no hesitation, turned his gun towards Remy and fired.

The gunshot was deafening, even with the thick earthen walls to absorb the sound. Faith instinctively crouched and covered her head while Sam lunged for the weapon in Arthur's hand. Sam grabbed Bixby's arm and tried desperately to pull the gun away from him.

"Faith get down!" Sam yelled just as the gun fired again, this time hitting the sloped ceiling. Quickly, Arthur thrust the palm of his hand towards Sam's face. Sam managed to turn his head as Arthur's palm connected hard with the side of Sam's nose instead of the front. The crunch of the cartilage was audible and rocked Sam back a step or two, giving Bixby the distance he was looking for. He lifted his leg and slammed the thick heel of his boot into the side of Sam's knee. Sam fell to his good knee with a loud curse and finally to the ground as Arthur landed a hard, quick right hook to his jaw.

Faith wasn't sure how much time had passed. When the gun fired, she dropped to the floor with her hands over her head; eyes shut tight. The second shot sent the ringing in her ears into overdrive, drowning out every other sound around her. Over the high pitch ringing in her ears, she heard a whimper, like that of a small dog, coming from beside her. She chanced to open her eyes, and her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach.

Remy sat on the floor leaning against a pile of broken barrels and crockery. His hands were shaking, pressed against the pouch of his hoodie. Blood was seeping through his fingers.

"Oh my god," Faith breathed and scampered quickly to Remy's side.

"Faith, Faith," Remy repeated her name in a small voice. The big attitude of the promising treasure hunter was gone as well as the cockiness that came with the confidence of his expansive knowledge of history. The quivering, painfilled whine had reminded Faith again exactly what he was. At his core, he was still just a 17-year old boy. He was a child.

The sounds of the fighting behind her melted away as she pushed her emotions down inside. She could deal with her fear and panic later. Remy was shot, and he needed her. She blew out a deep breath and quickly put her hair up in a sloppy ponytail to get it out of her way. Even though she had no children of her own, Faith flipped into Mom Mode.

"Remy, Remy, let me see. Ok? Let me see it," Faith said gently.

"It hurts, no, no, it hurts," Remy whimpered, trying to curl forward for comfort from the pain.

"I know it hurts but I gotta look at it," She insisted.

Remy leaned back slowly and let his hands drop. Faith grabbed the bottom of his hoodie and shirt and peeled them up slowly. A steady trickle of blood oozed out of a small hole in his stomach beside his navel. Faith didn't know fuck all about gunshot wounds but she was pretty sure this could be worse. Faith pulled Remy's hoodie back down and pressed firmly on the wound. Remy groaned and curled forward from the pain.

 _Better check if there's an exit wound or if this thing's still in there_ , Faith thought. She put a comforting hand on his back and felt the warm, thick blood that had collected so quickly in his clothes. She leaned back, saw the dark red pool that had begun to form behind him and dropped her head in defeat.

"Is it bad? It's bad isn't it?" Remy asked. Faith leaned him back gingerly against one of the mostly intact barrels. Remy stared at Faith for an answer but she was at a loss for words to give him. All she could do was softly stroke his hair. The look on her face had already said all he needed to know. Remy began to cry.

Faith looked up in time to see Arthur Bixby grabbing the note that a now semi-conscious Sam had hidden up the sleeve of his coat. Arthur stuffed it into the back pocket of his khakis.

"You, finish this," Arthur ordered one of his men, pointing to Sam. "You, torch it. They can ID them from their teeth," He motioned with his head to his other man as he straightened his polo shirt and turned his attention to Remy and Faith. Crouched next to Remy, she steadied herself with one hand on Remy's shoulder, the other feeling blindly behind her for anything she could use as a weapon as Bixby approached her.

 _Fuck, maybe Sam was right about the gun thing_ , she thought fleetingly.

"The Bible please, Miss Spencer," Arthur requested. Faith continued to stare at him, crouched in silence. Bixby huffed and raised his gun to her face.

"Miss Spencer, I've already shot Mr. St. James here. I would rather not shoot you as well. It looks rather painful," He said, glancing at Remy who was busy muffling a wet cough behind a bloodstained hand.

Faith's fingers found the grip of a ceramic jug and she grasped it tightly in her hand, her brain formulating what could only be called a half-assed plan.

"Give it to him Remy," She said, eyes still locked with Bixby's. Remy stared at her in shock, his face sweaty and pale.

"What? No!" He protested with what strength he had.

"Rem," Faith turned to look at Remy, hoping the message in her eyes would come through. "Just give it to him," She told him, giving his arm a firm squeeze.

 _C'mon Rem, please, please, go with me here._

Remy cautiously leaned forward to reach behind him to the back pocket of his jeans. He grabbed the small book and brought it out, the sight of it grabbing Bixby's attention and giving Faith the in that she had prayed for.

Faith sprang up and swung the jug down on his Bixby's shoulder, taking him by surprise. He stumbled backward a step. Faith stepped forward and held the jar above her, hoping to send it crashing down on his head. Arthur, not as dazed as Faith thought he was, saw her rear back and grabbed ahold of her makeshift weapon with his free hand. He ripped it from her hands and swung his arm with the gun, clocking her with the butt of it in the cheek. The blow sent her sideways to the ground on top of the remains of some barrels, the same ones she had been looking at before this mayhem had started.

"Hey asshole," Sam said from behind Arthur. Faith watched from the ground as Bixby whirled around and took a sharp right hook to the chin from Sam.

 _Wasn't he just knocked out?_ She thought hazily. Sam was hurting but judging by the other bad guy on the ground; he wasn't out for the count just yet. She felt the side of her face starting to swell, her sight in her right eye obscured by her growing cheek. Faith made it to her knees slowly, her body hurting from her hard landing on the broken wood. She saw Sam and Arthur trading blow for blow when a quick kick to her stomach sent her back to the ground; the wind knocked out of her. She had forgotten about the other guy. The one who was now emptying the remains of a gas can near the edge of the basement. Sam took one more punch to the face and landed hard on the ground.

"Now stay there!" Arthur commanded. He snapped his fingers a couple of times, signaling the arsonist it was time to go. Bixby crouched down in front of Faith who was still lying face down on the ground trying frantically to catch her breath.

"I have to ask Miss Spencer," He said quietly. "After all the misery Samuel Drake has caused to you and your family, how in the world can you trust that man? Now myself, personally, I couldn't do it,"

 _What in the world is he talking about?_ Faith thought, not completely sure that she had even heard him right.

"Anyway," Bixby relented. As he stood, he grabbed the Bible that lay beside Remy. Remy made a half-hearted grab for his arm but Bixby batted it away as if a pesky fly had landed on him at a picnic. Arthur's friend with the gas can boost him up into the kitchen while the one meant to take care of Sam had begun to come around onto his feet. Thankfully Sam had as well.

The arsonist struck a match and threw it in the corner of the basement. A flame sprung to life and began to crackle and consumed the gas on the basement floor. His arm stretched up; he waited impatiently for Bixby to pull him out of the depths of the basement pit. Arthur instead produced the gun that he had stowed temporarily in his belt. He fired a single shot into the man's head, his body falling back and to the ground near Faith and Remy. Faith watched in anguish as Arthur Bixby turned on his heel and stalked away with the note, with her mother's Bible, with everything they had worked for. And now the basement was on fire.

Every feeling, every emotion swirling inside of Faith spun together and turned into raw rage. Adrenaline surged through her as she got to her feet, the pain in her body gone from her senses. Sam and his enemy had both made it back up and were back to trading, blocking and landing blows. Faith had had enough of it. She scanned the floor. Her dark eyes zeroed in on a pointed chunk of glass. Glass that had once been a part of the lantern they had found just a very short time ago. She scooped it off the floor. The sharp and jagged edges of the glass cut into her palm as she held onto it tightly, the pain barely registering for her. Striding towards Sam and his foe, the anger coursed through her body, the whooshing sound of the blood pounding red-hot in her ears drowned out the sounds around her.

Sam landed one good kick to his opponent, sending the man down onto his knees. Panting, Sam watched as Faith came up behind the man and grabbed him around his head with an arm by surprise. Sam honestly wasn't sure what she was doing until he saw the point of the glass go into the man's neck and Faith twist the glass, tearing open the gash in his neck as far as she could. Blood poured from the open wound while Faith held her enemy's head. After a few seconds, she felt him finally go still and let the body fall forward, glass still protruding from his neck when he hit the ground.

 _Holy shit_ , was all Sam could think. Not many things shocked Sam anymore but this one did. He knew there was strength in Faith, mentally and emotionally, the last week had shown him that she had both of those in spades but this was different. The suddenness and viciousness in her actions had surprised him, but the rage and hate he saw in her eyes gave him that dark, fleeting déjà vu feeling he had felt with her the night they had met.

The snapping and popping of the flames broke Sam from his daze. The fire began to crawl across the debris on the floor and up the remains of the staircase, blocking off their exit. Unfazed by the growing flames, Faith limped quickly back to Remy's side, Sam followed suit.

The front pouch of his hoodie was saturated with blood, the pool on the ground behind his back now much larger than before. His face had turned a gray white and a thin layer of blood coated his bottom lip. The green hair that had made him look vibrant before now clashed against his ashy skin and the bright blue of his eyes had taken on a milky hue.

Sam's heart clenched in his chest. The minutes between the first gunshot and this moment had been a blur of fists and blood and black to him. The vacant stare of the 17-year old boy in front of him slammed reality back into his chest.

"Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus Remy," Sam moaned.

 _Sweet Mother Mary, I got this kid killed. I was supposed to keep us safe. I got him killed. I was stupid, I fucked up and now we're gonna die. All because of me._

Sam placed a hand tentatively on the boy's thigh, afraid to hurt him more than he already had. Remy's eyes swiveled to meet his.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I got you involved in this," Sam apologized and hung his head in shame. Remy shoved him in the shoulder and gave a weak but sincere laugh. It startled Sam. Laughter was the last thing he expected to hear.

"Dude, I got my adventure. My great Drake adventure. It's all good." A calm had taken over Remy, an acceptance of his fate.

"It's all good?" Sam repeated incredulously, "You're dying."

"What did you call it that one time? Occupational hazard."

Sam let out a mirthless chuckle. The temperature of the basement had grown steadily, along with the smoke and the flames, with the wreckage of the stairs acting as a giant bonfire. The fire had already begun to work its way across the ceiling. A chunk of wood fell from an overhead beam near them and sent sparks in all directions as it hit the floor. Faith kicked it away with her boot.

"Back of the room. Get her out. Go," Remy commanded, grasping Sam by the shoulder firmly. Sam covered the boy's hand with his own and squeezed it. He gave Remy a nod of acknowledgment, both men knowing this was goodbye. In his heart, Sam felt like a coward to not stay until the end with Remy, but he knew if there was any chance to get Faith out, to get himself out, he had to take it.

Sam headed towards the back of the smoky room as Faith took up position next to Remy. Remy's look softened after Sam left, the brave front put up for Sam now gone as Faith gently leaned Remy against her. She took his hand in hers and softly stroked his green hair. The last thing she wanted was for him to be alone at the end. No one deserved to be alone at the end.

Remy mumbled in Faith's ear. Her eyebrows furrowed. "What?"

He cleared his throat, causing him to grimace, and repeated, 'Key West. It's in Key West."

Faith's hand dropped from Remy's hair. She held him gently by the shoulders so the gaze of her hazel eyes could grab his.

"No Remy, no more. It's over," Faith said softly.

"No, you need to get your answers. You need your questions answered," Remy's mumbled as his eyes began to drift, their look of vacancy became more prominent. His breathing had become shallower as Faith held him against her, feeling his heartbeat slow along with his breath. Remy's stare was fixed in a far corner of the room. As she held Remy in silence, a slight chuckle escaped his lips.

"Wow. You really look like her, you have her eyes," He said softly.

"What?"

"Your mom," He replied. The small smile left his face. The last bit of life slipped from Remy's eyes and escaped with his last breath into the fire filled room.


	14. Wish You Were Here

Chapter 14

Sam shielded his eyes against the flames that were licking at the corners of the room. He coughed as he edged around what was the remains of the stairs, now just a tall tower of fire and heat. Sam reached a hand out in front of him, finally feeling the cool dirt of the back wall against his hand. He patted the wall frantically, ducking lower as the flames made their way across the ceiling. Finally, he felt the seam of the dirt crusted door under his fingers.

"Oh thank god," He uttered in relief as he frantically began to scratch at the small door in the corner of the room.

"Faith, C'mon! There's a door!" He yelled, his voice barely carrying over the sound of the house going up around them. Unable to grip the door, Sam slammed his shoulder into it, the dirt covering the entrance falling to the ground.

"C'mon, move you, son of a bitch," He muttered under his breath as he drove his weight against the door again. This time, the wood shuddered and cracked. Sam threw himself against it with a yell one more time, and the door exploded, covering him with dirt, dust, and speckles of wood as he landed on the ground. The doorway led to a small passage no bigger than a walk-in closet. Laying on the ground, Sam watched as the smoke pushed across the ceiling, finding its escape between the small slats of wood that covered it. A storm cellar, complete with a long-forgotten storm door. It was a way out.

"Faith!" Sam called as he scrambled to his feet. He looked back; the flames had doubled in size and number, the heat bordering on unbearable. He heard nothing but the sound of the blaze around him. Sam headed frantically back into the basement, his eyes burning and red from the smoke.

Faith sat against the back wall, still holding Remy, her face buried in his wild hair. Sam knelt by her side.

"Faith, we gotta go, this house ain't gonna last much longer," Sam told her.

"We can't leave him," She said in a muffled, watery voice from between the locks of hair.

"He's gone, Faith. He's gone, and we're gonna be next if we don't move!" Sam urged, his voice growing louder over the noise of the snapping wood.

"We can't leave him, Sam! We can't leave him!" She cried. A loud crash interrupted her pleas as the large iron stove from the kitchen above crashed through the ceiling. Sam threw himself over Faith, shielding her from the flying embers and debris. He knew that the house didn't have much longer. Sam sat up and grabbed Faith roughly by the shoulders.

"Look! We lost the Bible, we lost the note, and we lost Rem! I'm not losing you too!" He yelled, his eyes frustrated and pleading her to go with him.

Faith let go of Remy, letting his lifeless body slump back against the barrels. Without a word, Sam grabbed her hand and pulled her up. The fire overhead blazed out of control as it ate away at the rest of the house. Keeping crouched, he led her back and through the small opening to the cellar door. Faith doubled over, a gagging cough grabbing her as the air in her lungs was replaced with thick smoke. Sam pushed on the hinged doors above their heads. He felt the doors give a little under pressure.

"Help me push this," He said quickly. The flames had begun to make their way into their little alcove, and the oxygen was almost gone. Sam and Faith braced their arms and with a quick 3-2-1 from Sam, pushed against the old doors with all their strength. The doors opened, and the hinges screamed in protest. Smoke billowed out of the opening as Sam and Faith climbed up and through the doors, scampering into the woods that backed up to the house.

Faith leaned against a tree, gasping for fresh air. Sam turned and saw what was once the home of Mary Edwards now a blazing inferno in the middle of the woods, the flames already trying to jump to neighboring trees. The second story imploded as Sam grabbed Faith's hand and led her back through the forest and down the path.

Faith stared out the windshield of the SUV as Sam drove down the rural highway, the car quiet except for the noise of the road under the turning wheels. Faith sat unblinking, almost catatonic. Her right cheek was swollen, her clothes torn from falling and her bottom lip had managed to stop bleeding finally. Sam wasn't in much better shape. His nose was slightly swollen and no longer bleeding. A gash began to crust over the end of his eyebrow, and his knuckles were a bloody mess. Both of them were covered with a layer of dirt and smoky soot that clung to their sweaty skin.

Sam drove as quickly as he could without drawing unwanted attention to the two of them, anxious to get out of Springfield, anxious to get out of Illinois altogether.

"Let me have your phone," He asked her quietly.

Wordlessly, she pulled the burner phone from the inner pocket of her jacket and handed it to him. Never taking his eyes off the road, Sam dialed 911.

"I want to report a fire. It looks like that big patch of forest off route 92 south of downtown is on fire, there's a ton of smoke. Tell them to get there quick," Sam said in a monotone voice before hitting END. He took the phone in both hands, cracked it in half and chucked it out the window onto the road.

Sam was careful to keep watch of Faith out of the corner of his eye as he drove. After the ordeal in the basement, he wasn't sure what to expect. _Catatonic is better than hysterical I guess,_ he thought. After a half hour of silence, his worry subsided a bit, figuring that Faith was processing everything in her own way, which was by herself, in her head, alone. He understood that was how he dealt with things too. Prison had a tendency to make oneself their own counselor.

Faith sat in the passenger seat, the only move she had made in the last hour was to switch from staring blankly out the window to staring blankly at her hands. They were filthy and turned from tacky to stiff as the blood that covered them dried. The little bits of wood that stuck to her skin held on by the sticky drying blood made her think about those mosquitoes caught in the tree sap in Jurassic Park.

As she stared at her hands, her brain slowly turning back on, she noticed something odd; Her hand had grown a small extra finger, one that seemed to have no bones to give it shape. She blinked a couple of times, the supposed extra finger coming into focus. On the floormat of the car, just beneath her hands, lay a red gummy worm; An escapee from Remy's never-ending pouch supply.

 _Remy, oh god, Remy._

The events flew through her brain, the solace of its emptiness gone, instead filled with the blood and horror that had just happened.

Faith's stomach began to churn quickly, the mechanics in her belly throwing the gears in reverse. She breathed deeply through her nose, her hand going to her stomach.

"Pull over," Faith said suddenly.

"What?" Sam asked, surprised to hear anything from Faith.

"Curb it!" She loudly demanded, one trembling hand at her mouth, the other frantically unclipping her seatbelt.

Sam quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road. Faith had the door open before Sam had the car in park and took off like a shot through the field of decapitated corn stalks in front of her. Sam got out of the car and limped after her, the one knee still smarting from the kick from Arthur gave it earlier. He saw Faith finally skid to a stop, doubled over. Sam slowed his pace when he heard the faint retching sounds in front of him.

Faith stood back up, the heaving finally subsided. She took a couple of wobbly sidesteps, wiping her mouth with the dirty sleeve of her jacket, looking like an Irish drunk in the St. Paddy's Day parade. Serendipitously, nature had placed a small boulder in the field. She plopped down hard, resting her head in her hands.

Sam walked up beside Faith. He went to put a comforting hand on her shoulder and stopped himself, thinking better of it. In their time together, Sam had caught on to the fact that Faith did not like to be touched. Instead, he sat down beside her, resting his elbows on his knees, the lowering sun casting them in a golden tone.

"I killed a guy," Faith said in a small voice, her head still in her hands.

"You did what you had to do."

"I killed him. I stabbed him with a piece of glass. I felt his blood on my hands; this is his blood on my hands," She said shakily as she dropped her bloodstained hands out in front of her.

"Look at me," He asked her, gently turning her shoulder towards him so he could look at her. Her eyes were large with fear and tear-filled.

"He was trying to kill us. Once he killed me, he would have gone after you. You did what you had to do," He explained as gentle as he could and still get his point across.

"I killed a guy and Remy's dead. Remy's dead," Faith said as she dropped her head and the tears started to spill down her bruising face.

Sam swallowed a tight lump in his throat, waiting for her to place the blame on him.

"He's dead, and we left him there in that burning building! What about his parents? His family?" She sputtered, crying. Sam stayed silent, bracing himself to be blamed but still knowing that all of this was better out than in.

"That asshole killed him. He shot a 17-year old boy," She sniffled.

"I shouldn't have let him come," Sam said guiltily.

"No, no. Don't go there. The blame is on Bixby. It's all that Bixby asshole and his fucking boss, not you. So, you quit that shit," Faith spit with anger through her tears.

Faith's burst of angry logic silenced Sam. He expected her to cast nothing but blame in his direction. Assorted accusing statements like, 'Why didn't you do this, why did you let him do that, You could have stopped him.' That lingering feeling of inferiority in him had always reared its ugly head in big situations like this. Faith blamed Arthur Bixby, blamed Jasper Nox, but she didn't blame him. The heavy guilt in his heart wasn't gone, but Faith had made it lighter, and for that, at that moment Sam knew he kind of loved her.

"He was just a kid. He was just a kid, Sam! He was just starting out and he was gonna go so far, so far and now he's gone. He's gone," She sobbed into her hands, her tears flowing freely.

Sam's heart ached for Remy, and it ached for Faith. He wanted to ease the burden on her, make her feel at least a little better like she had done for him.

He reached his arm behind her and gently patted her on the back, rubbing her back lightly.

Faith turned towards Sam and put her arms around him, taking him by surprise. For the first time in months, she wanted to be touched, wanted to be comforted. She buried her head in the shoulder of his coat, her arms around his chest. He gingerly rested his face on the crown of her head as he rubbed her back and held her as she cried.

"I'm tired of people dying," She said, her voice muffled by the fabric of his jacket and the tears in her voice.

"I know," He muttered gently into Faith's hair.

Faith sat and cried while Sam held her in a strange field by the side of the road in Illinois as the sun went down.

Despite Arthur Bixby, despite Jasper Nox, despite everything, at that moment Faith felt safe.


	15. Make You Feel My Love

Chapter 15

They drove silently into Missouri at around midnight. Sam pulled into one of his typical looking motels: themed, cheap and just decent enough to not charge by the hour. As he parked in front of the manager's office, Faith noticed the building across the street.

 _Perfect_ , she thought to herself.

"I'm gonna run across the street and grab some supplies while you check us in. Be right back," Faith told Sam as she climbed out of the car. The chilly drizzling rain had started hours ago, and miles away but persisted, making Faith wrap her jacket around her tighter. The electronic door beeped as she entered the 24-hour pharmacy. She went quickly up and down the aisles. At this hour, thankfully, the building was a ghost town. Trying to explain the dirt, blood, bumps, and bruises wasn't something she really felt like doing at that moment. She grabbed a bottle of peroxide, a roll of gauze and a small box of bandages. Heading towards the front register, she swung down the pain relief aisle and grabbed the strongest aspirin she could find. She made her way to the checkout and dropped her bounty of first aid goodies down on the counter.

A couple of minutes had passed, the mellow sounds of the soft rock station playing over the speakers drifted in one ear and out the other. Growing impatient, Faith looked around her, clearing her throat loudly. Nothing.

"Fuck this," She said to herself, fishing a crumpled twenty out of the front pocket of her dirty jeans. Faith plopped it on the counter with a smack and took her items into her arms. Eyeing the cooler of drinks next to the register, she took two cans of premixed screwdrivers for herself and Sam. Extra pain relief.

"Money's on the counter!" Faith yelled and walked out the door, the electronic bell dinging as she exited and stalked back across the street.

Sam already had the room door open and was bringing their duffels in from the car. Faith slipped through the doorway and put her purchases down on the table as Sam closed the door behind the two of them and double locked it. He checked the bolt; he wasn't taking any chances.

"What did you get?" Sam asked, closing the drapes to the large window.

"Bandages and booze. Figured we could use both."

"Nice," Sam said as he switched on the bedside lamp.

"Sometimes I have a good idea or two."

Sam stood on one side of the small motel room, Faith on the other, both idling awkwardly, trying not to look the other in the eye. With the events of the last 24 hours, the tentative friendship that they had developed had changed, mutated into something else, allowing for an awkwardness to grow between them again. Each had been given a glimpse inside of the other, something they hadn't expected and something neither one knew how to deal with, at least not right then. The moments of emotional nakedness that Sam and Faith had expressed in the past 24 hours was something neither one of them were quite ready for.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck, his nervous habit, and cleared his throat a bit.

"Why don't you shower first?" Sam said, gesturing to the bathroom and doing his best to avoid Faith's gaze. "I gotta make a phone call. I, uh, should call Nathan. Tell him what happened," His voice reduced to a mumble by the end of the statement. Faith nodded and grabbed her backpack. She closed the bathroom door behind her as she heard Sam dialing his phone.

"Hello?" Nathan's voice answered cautiously after just two rings.

"Hey little brother," Sam said as he sat down in one of the hard chairs near the table.

"Sam! Are you alright? Is Faith with you? What the hell happened?"

"Just, slow it down for me, okay? It's been a long day," Sam said, reaching down, rooting around in his duffel bag. After a moment, he put a fresh pack of smokes which he thankfully bought that morning, his gun and two airline size bottles of whiskey on the table.

"Ok, start at the beginning, what happened?" Nathan asked.

"Arthur Bixby happened. Arthur Bixby and two thugs in a broken-down house," Sam answered as he unscrewed the tops of the two bottles.

"Are you alright?"

Sam paused for a moment, closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. "Nathan, listen, Rem-,"

"Remy didn't make it," Nate interrupted in a low voice. Sam responded by draining half of one of the bottles in front of him.

"They found his body in the house. Police told his parents some kids came across him when they went out there to party and that they started the fire by accident," Nathan repeated the story he had heard.

Sam let out a snort of disgust.

"Wanna tell me what really happened?"

"Arthur cornered us in the basement. Demanded everything we had. He shot Remy and told his lackey to set the place on fire. Arthur got away with the Bible, and the note Rem found," Sam finished.

"Jesus Sam," Nate replied.

"I tried to get between Remy and the gun, but I just wasn't fast enough," Sam admitted, his voice sounding defeated.

"Are you alright?" Nate asked, sidestepping Sam's guilty statement.

"Me? Fuckin' fabulous as always," Sam said, talking a hull off his smoke.

"What about Faith?"

"Physically, just a little banged up. Mentally, I don't know. I mean, she was holding the kid when he died, that's gotta fuck with you a bit," Sam surmised.

"I'm sure once you guys head back, it'll help," Nate said.

Sam furrowed his brow as he took another drag off his cigarette.

"What are you talkin' about, 'head back'? We found proof, solid proof that that stuff is still out there waiting to be found. We're close Nathan. I know we are," Sam urged.

"You remember the promise you made to Sully, Sam? The one about keeping Faith safe? You remember making that promise? If you don't bring her back, you're throwing that promise out the damn window." Nate warned him.

Sam drank down the rest of the whiskey bottle and let out an annoyed groan into the phone. "I can't walk away from another treasure Nathan, I know I can find this one."

"It's not your goddamn treasure to find! Your job was to help her find her answers while keeping her safe. This is too dangerous, Sam! You want her to end up like Remy too?" Nathan yelled.

Sam hung his head. He knew he could only escape the blame for so long; he just hated it was Nate that had shackled it back to him.

"Look, Sam, I'm sor-," Nate began, taking a gentler, less frustrated tone.

"Don't worry about it. I'll talk to you later little brother," Sam interrupted, ending their conversation abruptly. He pitched the phone across the room in disgust where it landed on the bed. He heard the door to the bathroom open and stubbed out the butt of his cigarette. Faith walked out in a pair of comfy shorts and an oversized shirt, hair and skin scrubbed clean, holding a cold washcloth to her swollen cheek.

"All yours," Faith said as she threw her backpack in the corner of the room. Sam reached into his duffel and pulled out a pair of rolled up sweatpants and gratefully headed towards the already steamy bathroom. The guilt that Faith had managed to alleviate about Remy earlier had now come back tenfold thanks to Nate. Sam foolishly hoped that he could scour it away, wash it off and send all of Remy's proverbial blood that he saw on his hands down the drain along with the real stuff.

Faith finished securing the bandage around her leg as Sam emerged from the bathroom. Wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and a white tank top, he looked clean and comfortable.

"How's the leg?" He asked.

"Alright, just oozy," She said. Reaching over to the nightstand next to her, she grabbed a can of the premade screwdriver and held it out to Sam.

"I'm good," He said, holding up the other small whiskey bottle he had left.

"Suit yourself," Faith said, popping the top open.

Sam, placing his mini bottle and his gun on the nightstand next to him, plopped sorely down on the bed next to Faith. They sat quietly, tending to their wounds, drinking and watching the old TV in the motel room on low volume. After a while, Sam felt his eyelids getting heavy. He had finished the last little bit of his whiskey, pitched his empty into the trash and leaned back against the headboard, arms crossed in front of him. Faith let out a little snore. Curled up on her side, she still held her half-empty can upright in her hands. Gently, Sam slid the can from between her fingers and placed it on the small table next to him. He flipped off the TV, checked his gun, made sure the safety was off and turned off the light. In minutes, Sam was asleep.

 _Fucking animal._

 _Sam was back in Panama. Back in the bar, back to the fight. Rafe's mad laughter rang through his head, like the demented soundtrack to his nightmare. The man he hit with the rum bottle was on the ground, the angry woman with him, glaring at Sam. The woman shifted, and the man on the floor was now Remy, blue eyes rolled back in his head. The woman changed and was Faith, the anger blazing in her eyes that he had seen before was the same. That's not Faith and Remy. It wasn't Faith and Remy, Sam tried to convince himself, willing his dream to change back to his standard nightmare. He couldn't look at him or her like that. When Sam was convinced he couldn't stand it any longer, the mood of the dream began to shift. A gentle voice started to drown out the sound of Rafe's cackling. He heard his name._

"Sam, it's ok. It's just a dream. It's just a dream, Sam. It's alright," He heard. The phrases repeated, each time becoming clearer, causing the nightmare around him lost color, eventually reduced to fuzzy outlines and shades of gray.

Sam opened his weary eyes, still heavy with sleep and found Faith's calm hazel ones staring back at him. Her hand was resting gently on his chest, the frantic pace of his heart now settling beneath her fingers, the anxiety slowly leaving his core.

"It's ok. It's just a dream," Faith repeated. She wasn't 100% sure if he was lucid or it was just a fleeting moment of wakefulness.

"Faith?" Sam questioned groggily.

She smiled warmly at him and rubbed his chest lightly.

"You're ok Sam. It was just a nightmare. Go back to sleep," She said and gave his damp chest a couple of gentle pats before rolling over onto her side away from him.

The anxiety in his body was just about gone as if by putting her hand on his chest, she had drawn his fear and panic up through her fingers and took it away by osmosis.

 _It's like she's magic. She's a witch! Or a warlock. She's a confusing, pretty warlock,_ Sam thought, his brain rolling fast through different thoughts like a man on drugs. With his wild notions subsiding, he fell back to sleep. This time, it was sleep without dreams.


	16. Land of Confusion

Chapter 16

Sam had woken up before Faith. His nightmare and her cure for it nothing but a fuzzy memory. Dragging on a pair of jeans and a dark red overshirt, he left the room and made his way down the street towards the gas station a block away in search of coffee. His hands in his pockets and a smoke hanging from between his lips, he tried not to wince too bad at the pain in his knee. The kick from Bixby had been a good one. Before he had left the motel, he'd swallowed a couple of aspirin that Faith had thoughtfully gotten the night before.

 _Anytime you wanna kick in, that'd be good,_ he thought to himself, pitching the end of his smoke into the gutter and opening the gas station door.

When Sam walked back into the room, two coffees balanced in one hand, Faith was already up. Dressed in dark tan cargo pants and a black tank top, her one boot already on, she was ready and raring to go. She looked up from tying her shoe, her face contorting to pure pleasure at the sight of the steaming cup in his hand and the smell that accompanied it.

"Oh, coffee! You're wonderful," She moaned as Sam handed her a cup.

"Yeah, I know I am," He agreed. He sat down on one of the chairs next to the table, taking his phone and his smokes out of his pockets and putting them next to him.

As she took a tentative sip of the hot brew, she noticed Sam's face and grimaced.

"I know it's gas station coffee, but it could be worse," He said, thinking momentarily of what used to pass for coffee in prison; Bitter water that he swore they just dunked a brown crayon in for the color.

"No, no, your face. Eeesh," Faith muttered.

"Hey! And I was nice enough to go out and buy you coffee, all out of the goodness of my heart," Sam said, playing it up as much as he could.

She rolled her eyes. "It's just gas station coffee."

"It's still coffee, and uh," he paused, motioning towards her face, "You're not lookin' so hot either sweetheart."

Faith tentatively touched her swollen cheek, avoiding the fresh scab that had formed on it.

"How bad does it look?" She asked.

"Got a nice shiner with some fun colors. I'd stay away from the beauty pageants for a while," Sam concluded.

"At least I don't sound like a Boston Snuffleupagus," she retorted, making Sam choke on his coffee while she chuckled.

Faith set her drink aside and finished putting on her shoes. She ran a brush through her auburn hair, and her fingers worked to put it into a sloppy braid as Sam sat, finishing his coffee and looking on his phone. She peeked over his shoulder as she secured the end with the elastic.

Confused, she asked, "Why are you looking up Buffalo?"

"To take you home."

"Take me home? What? No!" She protested, shocked he would even suggest it.

"Faith," He said with a sigh as he stood up to face her. He already felt the fragile good mood of the room being sucked out and the clouds of a fight ready to roll in.

"Why would I go home?" She asked.

"Look, this was a shot in the dark at best, trying to get you your answers and this treasure we weren't even sure existed in the first place. And if you haven't noticed, it's a hell of a lot bigger than that now. Between Nox and Bixby and R-," The name stuck in his throat, unable to come out. "And what happened in that basement," Sam augmented, "It's too dangerous."

"Jasper's got my book, he's got that note. He's gonna find that treasure, and then I'm never gonna get my answers! We're _this_ close Sam, I know it! I know it, I can feel it!" Faith ranted and raved.

 _Jesus, is that what I sound like?_ Sam thought fleetingly.

"You were gonna donate the book anyway and now you want it?" He questioned her.

"Yeah, now I want it," Faith said, arms crossed in front of her defensively.

"Yeah? Why?" Sam prodded.

"Cause now I do, that's why!" Faith childishly retorted.

Sam, frustrated, sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. He didn't like this. Half of him wanted to keep going and finally find a treasure himself. She could get her answers, and he'd be able to protect her. The other half of him, the half that sounded like Victor, that sounded like Nate, screamed that he couldn't even protect poor Remy. That this was too dangerous and that one of them, if not both, would end up dead.

"If we turn back now, Remy's death will have been for nothing. You know that, right?" Faith said quietly, a steel stare glaring at Sam.

Sam had no words, no retort, other than to stare back at her with a glare of his own. After a moment, Faith broke her gaze and chuffed.

"If you take me home, I'm just gonna go after it by myself," She threatened, channeling her 14-year-old little shit self of her youth.

"C'mon Faith, you and I both know you wouldn't even know where to head next.'

"You wanna bet?" Faith said with a cocky grin, sticking her face right in Sams. _There's no fuckin' way,_ Sam thought. A fleeting thought. After staring into Faith's eyes, seeing that realized, _holy shit, she really does_.

"How?" Sam asked, skeptical at this bombshell.

Faith cast her eyes down towards her shoes. "Remy told me. At the end."

"I'm telling you, don't go after this alone. I don't normally say this, but I think Nathan's right here. You should probably go back home."

A tense and taunting silence sat between the two of them. It was a stalemate neither one of them wanted and the heavy moment standing between them beckoned each of them uniquely.

"It's yours," Faith said, looking up at Sam after a moment of silence.

"What?"

"The book, whatever we find, all of it. Any claim to it, any money that comes from it, it's yours," Faith offered. This was her one last attempt to keep her journey, one that had started to bring her back to life, from coming to an abrupt end. When in doubt, go for the greed.

"Jesus, can you just make up your mind? Now you don't want any of it?"

"I just want my answers."

"And you're sure about where we need to go?"

"I am. I want this Sam, and I know you want this too. I know the risks. After yesterday, I know them _really_ well. So, from here on out, we're a team. No more you always just protecting me. We're in this together, we protect each other."

He knew he should take her back. It would be the smart thing, the responsible thing to do. But the offer was too good to be true. A lost treasure for him alone to claim? How could he turn that down? And in a part of his heart, the part he didn't want to admit existed, he wasn't ready to let her go. Not yet.

 _Fuck it. I don't want this to end._

Sam silently took the keys to the car from his pocket and held them out to Faith.

"You're drivin' first."

Faith gave a sigh of satisfaction and took the keys from his hand.

"So where are we going?"

LYONS, GEORGIA

It was a humid night. The air was thick and heavy, giving the evening the feel of being suspended in syrup. Jasper Nox was hosting one of his usual upscale dinner parties where he could show off his wealth to his other wealthy friends. Proving that he belonged in the circles of Georgia's high society was paramount to Jasper. This evening's festivities included a 6-course creole spectacular, showcasing the dishes of the South's most impressive new chef.

Jasper was currently entertaining his dinner guests with an amusing anecdote about botulism during the Civil War when Arthur Bixby entered the house. He knew that Jasper would have guests, he almost always entertained on the weekends, and had cleaned himself up enough to pass for presentable. Arthur Bixby, a regular at the estate, moved through the house towards the dining room unacknowledged. Jasper was at the head of the dinner table, holding court over twenty of Georgia's elite and wealthy. As usual, Jasper had dressed to the nines. Today it was a smoke gray suit, pastel pink shirt and yellow suspenders to go with his cherry wood brass topped walking stick. His guests laughed with fake enthusiasm as he finished his tall tale when he caught sight of Arthur standing in the doorway into the dining room from the kitchen.

"If you'll just pardon me a moment my friends. A host's duties are never done," He said, excusing himself from the table. Bixby backed out of the shadow of the dining room and into the busy staff kitchen, Nox right on his heels.

"I hear you have some good news for me, Arthur!" Nox said with an anxious drawl.

"Yes sir, Mr. Nox," Arthur said and produced the Bible and the note from the leather briefcase he carried. Jasper held the Bible delicately, his eyes gleaming and almost tearful.

"This is wonderful Bixby, absolutely wonderful!" Jasper praised, setting the Bible down on the steel counter they stood in front of. Next, he took the note, unfolding it as carefully as his twisted hand would allow. His eyes wide and sparkling like an emerald in the light, Jasper read the letter to himself, forming the words with his thin lips but uttering no sounds. He refolded the note and carefully placed it in the Bible.

"I trust you have a barrel for me as well?" Nox said, turning to Bixby, his thumbs anxiously rubbing against his index fingers in his fists as he awaited his next prize.

"Sir?" Arthur questioned as his stomach lurched upward.

"The note says that the clue to our final destination lies within the barrels. Where is my barrel?" Jasper asked, his smile slowly fading.

"I-I didn't bring one sir," He said, the palms sweating on the hands he held behind his back.

"Well then, I suggest you get yourself back to Illinois and retrieve one for me," Jasper said as he gave Bixby two hearty claps on the back and turned on his heel to his awaiting guests.

"I can't sir."

Jasper stopped. The sizeable toothy smile he put on his face for his friends dropped to a tight, thin-lipped grin of poorly hidden frustration. He turned his attention back towards Arthur.

"Pardon me?"

"Sir, I can't."

"And why not?"

Arthur studied the tops of his scuffed loafers as he shifted his weight nervously.

"I torched the house sir, to make sure the evidence and the bodies were destroyed," He added, hoping to give weight to his decision.

"Body, Bixby, one body," Jasper said as he held up a single finger for emphasis. Arthur's face contorted into a look of confusion and horror, his errors falling into place in his mind.

"Oh yes, two got away. Which leaves me with a dilemma," Jasper continued, sauntering slowly towards Arthur "The clue was on the barrels, barrels which are now soot. How in the blue blazes do I figure out where to go next? I'm sure Mr. St. James untangled this little riddle, we can surely find a means to get my answers from him! No, no, can't do that, you put a bullet in him so yet another dead end, literally."

Jasper had closed the gap between himself and Arthur, who now stood inches away from Mr. Nox.

"That leaves Mr. Drake and Miss Spencer, both of whom you also left for dead. No! Instead, they escaped their imminent demise and are off like a fart in the wind! So, tell me, Bixby, now that you have gone and destroyed all my avenues like a bull in a china shop, what exactly should I do now?" His last sentence slow, deliberate and full of thinly veiled wrath.

"I-I'll locate them for you, Mr. Nox. I swear, I'll find them," Bixby assured him, the eye contact he was trying to keep becoming harder.

"I'm sure you will son, I'm just sure of it," Nox said, clapping him on the shoulder. He placed his hand on Arthur's back and steered him through the kitchen.

"I just have to make one quick change in direction."

Quick as an asp, Jasper grabbed Bixby by the back of the neck and slammed his head on the edge of the cutting board next to him. Taking advantage of the daze he was in, Jasper, still holding him by the neck, plunged Arthur's head into the large, half-full tureen of gumbo left over from the third course that was on the counter. Despite the missing fingers, Jasper's wrist and arm were strong and able to hold Bixby's head submerged under the stew with one hand. He leaned the other against the counter, standing stoically, staring off into space as the kitchen staff watched in a nervous silence. Bixby tried fruitlessly to gain leverage, his hands unable to find a grip on the counter, his smooth soled shoes unable to grip on the floor. When he was finally still, Nox let go, letting Bixby's body drop to the ground. Jasper let out a happy sigh. He examined the mess that had become of his jacket and removed it.

"Wallace!" Jasper called, as he rolled up the sleeves of his pink shirt. Wallace appeared in the kitchen doorway. He spied the body on the floor and knew better than to comment.

"If you could take this to the laundry for me I would be much obliged. Also, if you could remove the trash that would be lovely."

"Yes sir," Wallace answered, unable to look Jasper in the eye.

"Now then!" Jasper said as he clapped and rubbed his hands together. He smoothed the frizz from the top of his head and adjusted his suspenders.

"I have kept my company waiting for far too long, and I do believe we are overdue for the next course!" He called out to the kitchen as he plastered his fake, happy, too many teeth smile back on his face and bounced out of the kitchen on the soles of his feet.


	17. I Found A Place For Us

As Faith and Sam made their way towards Key West, the car ride had been an uncomfortably quiet one, and Sam hated it. He could feel the cloud of Remy's death, it hung over Faith's head and the heaviness their journey had taken on permeated through the car like a fog. Faith had been almost silent, lost in her mind while she took her turn behind the wheel. Gone was the girl who had sung all the lyrics to Ice Ice Baby on the way Illinois just to prove to Sam that she could and in her place, was a girl who was so lost in her own head, Sam was pretty sure that if she thought any harder, her brain would implode.

He had tried his best to keep the conversation as they made their way south as light as possible, but the laughter between them had disappeared, and he wanted it back. Sam and Faith switched as day gave way to night. While he drove down the dark highway, Sam decided he wanted to do something nice for Faith, something to cheer her up.

 _I might be able to come up with something if I wasn't going through the fuckin' Ozarks,_ He thought to himself. Sam glanced at Faith who was passed out next to him with her head on her shoulder, tucked between the seat and the door.

"Maybe I can get her one of those fancy coffees from the gas station or something," Sam muttered to himself. Even as he said it, he chastised himself in his head for the shallowness and pure suckiness of it.

Sam wracked his brain, passing one of the many brightly lit billboards that dotted the fields along the highway when the idea finally came to him, one that he knew was perfect.

"Faith, Faith."

Faith woke up slowly to the sound of her name. Her neck had stiffened up along with her other bruised parts of her body, and she winced at the discomfort in her bones as she stretched. She opened her eyes to find the car stopped and Sam standing next to her, with her door open.

"Time to switch?" She asked, not knowing exactly how long she had been asleep, other than it was daylight when she had last had her eyes open.

"Yeah, but, I got a surprise for ya first," He said, causing Faith to scrunch up her face in confusion.

"Just c'mon," Sam urged, motioning for her to get out of the car. Skeptically, Faith slid out of the passenger seat and shut the door behind her. The moonless sky was spattered with stars. The occasional cloud that passed over them combined with the unusually balmy temperature made for a beautiful night. Faith trudged blindly to the front of the car, feeling the gravel crackle under her feet when Sam turned and grabbed her shoulders stopping her.

"Alright, wait here and close your eyes," Sam instructed her, a hint of happy anxiousness creeping into his voice.

"Come on Sam," She groaned grumpily and dug her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

"Just, trust me on this. Please? C'mon, close 'em, you know you wanna." He taunted her.

Faith sighed and obliged, closing her eyes and folding her arms across her chest.

"No, I really don't," She muttered under her breath. She could hear as Sam opened the car door, clicked the headlights on and close it again. The frayed ends of her nerves zinged for a minute until she heard the crunch of his boots over the gravel. _Oh good, he's not ditching me_ , she thought fleetingly.

"Keep them closed."

"Where the hell are we?"

"Hang on. Just one more second… Ok, now you can open them."

Faith opened her eyes, the object in front of her making them go wide with wonder. No more than ten yards in front of her, Samuel Drake stood proudly next to a comically large fork. The high-beam headlights of the car bathed the shiny utensil in a dazzling light, allowing Faith to appreciate the sheer size of it, even in the middle of the night. She looked around. A sign advertising the small town ahead of them and their famous fork was dimly lit down the road. As Sam pulled his phone from his jacket pocket, he cleared his throat dramatically.

"Welcome to the world's largest fork! This fork stands 35 feet tall and is made of pure stainless steel. The fork was erected four years ago to celebrate the relocation of the Food Network to the nearby town of Cecee. This grand utensil that stands before you weighs in at an impressive of 11.2 tons! Well, holy shit!" Sam finished, surprised at the facts the webpage on his phone told him.

Faith ambled towards the fork, her face still fixed in awe as she stared up at it towering above her. She touched one of the large tines that anchored it in the ground. As she felt the cool steel under her hands, a small chuckle escaped from Faith's lips. Sam watched her, the girl he had met had started to emerge and bubble to the surface before his eyes slowly.

After a moment, he asked, "So, whaddya think?"

"You drove to see the worlds largest fork."

"Yeah. Well, now I can say I've seen it, and you can too," Sam answered, throwing Faith's own words playfully back at her. "And I thought it might, ya know, cheer you up a little."

Speechless at that moment, Faith could only offer Sam a goofy stunned smile. She couldn't believe it. With the thought of massive treasure on the horizon, Samuel Drake cared about how she was doing. He could have driven straight through to the end of Florida and let her stew in her own head. Instead, he wanted to make sure she was ok, and he did it with a giant fork.

 _Holy crap, he gets me._ Faith savored the revelation. She wasn't used to that. She once had a boyfriend break up with her after six months because he couldn't 'get' her, couldn't understand her, that her personality was too weird. Sam Drake had managed to do it only knowing her a week.

Faith turned to look at Sam who was awaiting her reaction to his kind gesture. Closing the distance between them, she looked up at him, a warm grin plastered across his face. The headlights from their car causing the stubble to stand out on his strong jaw and bursting the gold flecks of hazel in his eyes, giving them the glow of a candle flame. Handsome and kind, a dangerous combination.

 _I really want to kiss him right now_ ; the thought blossomed in her mind.

Sadly, another slithered in just as quickly.

 _As soon as this is over, it's done. He'll be gone, and you'll be alone, again,_ the last sentence of the negativity reverberant in her head.

Instead of a kiss, she grabbed his hand in hers and gave it a gentle squeeze, letting her thumb caress the rough, bruised back of his.

"Thank you, Sam," Faith said sincerely, giving him a grateful smile.

 _Shit, for a second there I thought she was gonna kiss me_ , Sam thought to himself, feeling a drop of disappointment. _Kinda wish she did,_ allowing the truthful consciousness that he always pushed to the far depths of his mind to whisper to him.

"You're welcome," He replied, enjoying the feeling of his hand in hers. He shook off his deep thoughts and brought himself back to center.

"Geez, you had me nervous for a second there… I thought maybe you were gonna tell me to go _fork_ myself," Sam finished after a beat. Faith groaned playfully and let Sam's hand drop from hers while he gave an amused chuckle.

"That was just awful!" Faith said as she shook her head.

"It wasn't that bad!"

"Cutlery humor is not your specialty," Faith said, heading back to the car, Sam in step behind her.

"No, but admit it, I'm still a funny guy."

Faith stopped short at the front of the car.

"C'mon, admit it, you think I'm funny," Sam said with a cocky grin.

"You're hysterical, now fork over the keys," Faith deadpanned as she held out her hand impatiently.

Sam's cocky grin changed to a look of slack-jawed awe, causing the fragile stony look on Faith's face to give way to a triumphant happy laugh.

"You're somethin' else," Sam said with an amused look as he fished the keys out of his pocket. Faith grabbed them with a confident smile and headed towards the driver's seat. Sam let his head drop as he walked to his side of the car. An expression of relief and happiness on his face that stemmed from the thought in his head and his heart.

 _There she is._


	18. I Want Something Just Like This

Chapter 18

Sam Drake had never encountered a town like Key West before. Situated at the very end of the Florida Keys, it was a tourism hotspot that had still managed to keep almost all of its island 'tucked away from the world' charm and history.

"You've been down here before?" Sam asked, looking out the car windows as Faith drove down the main highway, the only road access to the island.

"Nope, just heard a lot about it. Always wanted to though," Faith said after a pause. She made her way through the center of the island, past the newer shopping centers and headed towards Oldtown.

The streets were narrow and busy, full of tourists on scooters and locals out walking, enjoy another day of sunny weather. Faith navigated down to the southern point of the island and pulled into the Seashell Motel, a rundown, but still decent pink stucco building hidden behind the rooted trees that lined the edges of the property.

After putting the car in a parking space, Sam went inside to grab a room while Faith unpacked their stuff from the trunk. She closed the back hatch and dropped Sam's heavy duffel to the ground. No clouds obscured the bright sun, prompting Faith to remove her sunglasses and raise her head to feel the rays on her face. The black eye she had acquired had kept her eyes under shades for the last two days. Aside from being self-conscious, she and Sam didn't need any unwanted attention.

The hypnotic sounds of the island. The music from the bars down the street, the rhythmic rush of the ocean, the beeping of the scooters on the road, all of it was a mixture of noises that calmed her soul.

"Are you sure this isn't some kinda zoo?" Sam's voice snapped Faith out of her head.

"What?" She asked, putting the sunglasses back on her face.

"I go in there; the man has not one but two, two giant parrots sitting in there with him! Said they're guards for his iguana. This big three foot one," He told her.

"Yeah, that's normal for down here," She assured him.

"It had a name tag. Sparky. He made me say hi to it before he'd give me the keys to the room."

"Again, normal."

"Faith."

"What?"

"There's a chicken crossing the road," Sam said in a low voice, nodding his head subtly towards the side street. Faith turned and looked. Sure enough, a large colorful rooster strutted through the crosswalk, made a quick pause, hopped onto the curb and continued down the sidewalk. Seeing a literal walking joke was just too much. "I've been a lot of places, but this is like somethin' outta the Twilight Zone."

Faith chuckled and grabbed her bag. Smiling at him, she offered a simple, "Welcome to Key West, Mr. Drake," and headed towards the motel.

After dropping off their stuff and a quick change into fresh clothes, Faith and Sam headed out into the warm afternoon sun. With the name of the town as their only lead, they knew they had their work cut out for them.

"So, where to?" Sam asked as they walked through the cracked motel parking lot, patting his pockets to look for his cigarettes. Feeling the boxy lump, he fished them out of the chest pocket of his loud Hawaiian shirt and slid one between his lips.

"No idea," Faith said. Sam stopped suddenly.

"What do you mean, 'no idea'?" He questioned cautiously.

"I mean just that. I have no idea where we're going." Faith replied slowly as if speaking to a child.

"Now wait a minute, you said you knew where to go, that Rem _told_ you where to go," Sam said, his eyes narrowed accusingly toward her.

"He did. He said Key West. We're in Key West!"

"That's all he said?" He questioned, finally lighting his smoke.

"Yeah."

"You're telling me that the only thing we know for sure is that it's in this town?"

"Yes," Faith said adamantly. Sam let out a frustrated huff, sending jets of white smoke out through his nostrils. He ran his fingers through his dark hair and shook his head. He thought that they had more to go on than this.

"C'mon!" Faith drawled with enthusiasm, "You're Sam Drake! Famed treasure hunter! Finder of Libertrailia!"

"Liber _tal_ ia," He corrected her.

"Libertalia! You didn't know where in the world that was and you still found it. This? It's a tiny little island! And you're…Sam…Drake," Faith's voice hesitated and faltered; Her pep talk began to lose steam as she watched the smoke slowly circle out of Sam's nose. Sam stood silent, staring at Faith.

"Stay here," He told her. Sam turned and headed towards the motel office in a slow jog. Faith tried fruitlessly to see what she could through the large plate-glass windows in the front, the glare of the sun off of them blinding her, despite her shades.

 _Oh god, I hope I didn't fuck up_ , Faith thought as she picked at her cuticles nervously. _He wouldn't turn around and go home now, right? Nah_ , she assured herself.

A few seconds later, Sam emerged from the office and trotted toward the giant palm tree where Faith stood in the shade, holding her breath in anticipation of what he would say.

"Library is eight blocks that way," Sam pointed down the busy main street of the island towards the north harbor. The nervous feeling within Faith faded away, carried off on the ocean breeze that blew between them. "It's a solid place to start. And we're paid up through the week; We're gonna be here for a while,"

"Guess I'm buying lunch then," Faith responded as she headed towards the noise of the center of town with Sam in step behind her.

"And dinner. And coffee in the morning," He prattled behind her.

Three hours later, Sam sat at a small outdoor table on the back patio of Captain Tony's Bar hunched over a map; a half-burnt down smoke tucked into the corner of his mouth. He and Faith had hit the town library, historical society, and municipal buildings, gathering whatever reference materials that seemed essential and that they could carry. With a couple of smooth compliments and a suggestive grin, Sam had charmed his way into the county records section of the municipal building, allowing him to get his hands on the historical maps of the island, complete with land records to go along with them.

As he flipped between his maps, Faith dropped a foamy pitcher of beer on the table, along with a large bowl of bright pink peel and eat shrimp.

"How goes it?" Faith asked as she sat down in the curved plastic chair across from him.

"Slow. I prefer my maps to have a giant red 'X' on them," Sam responded, stubbing out his smoke in the small ashtray next to him.

"Now where is the fun in that?" Faith teased, earning herself a glare from Sam.

"You got any ideas where we are on this map? You know more about this place than I do."

"Look for the morgue, icehouse or hanging tree; it's one of those three. I don't know how old your map is," She answered as she poured each of them a glass of beer from the sweating pitcher.

Sam glanced up at the building. "Colorful history. Explains the tree in the middle of the bar at least," He added, catching sight of the large oak tree trunk inside ringed by tables. After meeting Sparky and watching a chicken cross the road, nothing about this place surprised him.

"Alright, so I say we start with the oldest original buildings on the island, anything pre-1865," Faith said, laying out her plan as she grabbed a shrimp from the bowl. "If the structure's still standing, we look into it."

Sam nodded in agreement.

"Also," Faith continued, "Since we can get to the land records, we see who owns the building and try to find out if there's any connection to Mudd in any way. Lastly, I'll see if I can find out anything about the 3rd Artillery in here," she said, awkwardly shoving the shrimp in her hand quickly in her mouth while she reached into her shoulder bag on the floor. She pulled out a thick hardcover book and dropped it in front of him on his maps.

"History of the Florida Keys: Island Pioneers Volume One," Sam read the title aloud. He picked up the worn book and turned it over in his hands. A yellow 'Property Of' sticker caught his eye. With a slightly furrowed brow, Sam shot a questioning look at Faith.

"What?"

"Where'd you get this?" Sam asked.

"Library," She offered simply. Grabbing herself another shrimp to peel, she tried to hide the guilty grin that wanted to form at the corner of her mouth. After a few seconds, the stare of his hazel eyes broke down Faith's already flimsy façade. She chuckled deviously licking the spices off her fingers.

Sam raised his eyebrows in astonishment while a warm fire sparked to life deep inside of him. He wasn't sure what turned him on more, the fact that she had stolen something or the way she was sucking on the pad of her thumb.

 _Down boy, down_ , he thought.

"You know, if I wanted to work for my lunch, I could've just stayed in prison," Sam said, husking himself a shrimp, hoping to change the subject.

Faith stopped mid-sip.

"You went to prison?" She verified with surprise.

"A couple of times, more towards the higher end of a couple if I'm honest," Sam answered after swallowing his seafood.

"Stealing?"

He thought for a minute and answered, "Mostly."

"Hmph," Faith grunted, nodding her head in acknowledgment.

From the distant look in her dark eyes, Sam could see the wheels in her brain turning.

"I can hear you thinkin' from over here. What?" He questioned.

"Doesn't seem like you're a very good thief."

Sam choked on his beer. After a couple of coughs, he wiped the residual foam away from his mouth.

"I'll have you know I'm a _great_ thief. I'm a goddamn amazing thief actually," He touted, the defensiveness building in his voice.

"You've been caught multiple times, you've been to jail multiple times, you have no lock picking skills. It's just that all this stuff makes you sound like you're not really the best thief," Faith explained, wiping her hands on a napkin beside her on the table.

Sam picked up a butter knife. He held it out to Faith by the smudged blade.

"Here, why don't you stick this in my heart? It'd probably hurt less."

"Is Nate a thief too?"

Sam set the knife down on the table with a sour look. _Great, Compare the Drakes, my favorite game_ , Sam thought morosely.

"He was. He got out of the game a couple of years ago. And before you ask, yes, he's been in jail too, _many_ times. Victor too." He emphasized, grabbing his pack of smokes and shaking one loose.

Faith scrunched her brow, a slight pout on her lips as she slowly chewed on the shrimp in her hand.

"Afraid you ended up with the wrong Drake brother?" Sam asked as he gently tapped the cherry of his cigarette against the side of the plastic ashtray.

"I wasn't supposed to end up with a Drake at all! I went to Sully for information about a book. A week later, I'm looking for some million dollar treasure in Key West with you being chased by Ginger Colonel Sanders and company," Faith said, causing Sam to chuckle. "This was _not_ my plan," She finished, tossing a hollow shrimp tail into a small bowl set aside for their debris.

"And no, I don't think I ended up with the wrong Drake, if you're still wondering," Faith added while she topped off Sam's beer as well as her own.

"All those stories you told me about him on the way down here, he goes looking for something and ends up making a big ol' destructive mess. Kinda like a toddler," She surmised. Surprised at the comparison, Sam exhaled the smoke out of his mouth with a laugh, trying not to cough, and smashed the cigarette butt into the ashtray.

"Toddler. I'm gonna have to remember that," Sam mused, helping himself to another shrimp.

"You're the less destructive brother, just more criminally inclined." Faith declared.

"You know, me, Victor, Nathan, we're all thieves and criminals. And guess what sweetheart? Now you are too," Sam reminded her, holding out to her the book she illegally procured from the library earlier.

"It's only a library book."

"Hey, we all gotta start somewhere."

"I blame you. You're a terrible influence." She said with a grin as she took the book from him and set it aside with all of their other research material.


	19. I Lived

Chapter 19

Faith and Sam spent a week searching every private estate erected before 1865 in Key West. Every day started the same. Sam made a coffee run while Faith showered, then she poked fun at whatever garish Hawaiian shirt Sam had chosen to wear while they plotted out which properties to explore and research that day. In the afternoon, they went from house to house, property to property, hoping, praying that something, anything would link between its history and Dr. Samuel Mudd. They ended each day at Mallory Square, the harbor that served as the center of the town, and watched the sunset with the rest of the locals, while they drank Coronas and hoped the next day would bring some piece of evidence.

As each day passed without a lead, Sam grew weary. They hadn't found a damn thing; Nothing even remotely close to a clue. He also knew that Jasper and his men would eventually find out where they were. Jasper was an asshole, but an asshole with a lot of power and a lot of money, two things that Sam knew would make anyone talk. He suppressed the worrisome thought and kept it to himself. Sam was sure that Faith had already thought of it and he didn't want to remind her of it.

With the morning came a new week and a new plan.

"Museums," Faith declared, "We hit every one of them and see what we can learn."

"Good idea. I like museums," Sam said, a mischievous glint in his eye.

"No stealing," Faith ordered, pointing at him.

"What? Me?"

"Yeah, you."

"C'mon. Whaddya take me for?"

"A thief," Faith replied as she finished tying her shoes.

"I promise I'll be a good boy," He assured her as he stuffed his wallet in the pocket of his jeans. "We wanna keep a low profile, right?"

"I think you blew that plan out of the water when you put on that shirt," Faith said with a sigh, giving him a clap on the back as she opened the door to their room and headed out into the bright sun. Sam grabbed the hem of his shirt, a loud orange number covered in a pattern of beer bottles in front of yellow suns and palm trees. He looked down at it with a frown.

"I happen to _like_ this shirt," Sam said to himself while he stalked out the door on her heels.

"That was not a museum."

"Yes, it was!"

"That was a sideshow!" Sam insisted.

"Didn't you see the stuff they had?"

"I'm sorry, I was a little distracted by the guy dressed as a sea captain yelling 'Wreck Ashore!'"

Sam absently patted himself down while he stalked down Duval Street, the main artery of the island. As Faith kept pace next to him, she laughed to herself. The Pirate and Wreckage Museum was a bust. While it did have some interesting artifacts, nothing there linked Lincoln or Mudd to Key West.

"It's a tourist museum, what did you expect?" Faith asked.

"To not be asked for a tip when I left!" He answered, utterly agog at the question, while his hand continued to feel for the cigarettes he knew he grabbed before they left the room.

"Shirt pocket Sam," Faith said while she scanned the street for signs and ads for other museums.

"Thank you," Sam grumbled, grabbing the pack from his shirt and lit one for himself.

"It was meant to teach and entertain. Haven't you ever heard of 'edutainment'?" She asked him. The question made him stop short and stare at her.

"What? What the hell kinda word is that? 'Edutainment.'" He said, accenting each syllable of his new word with more disdain than the last.

"A made up one to sell parenting books and educational toys," Faith informed him. She checked the time on her phone. "We have time to hit another one before sunset."

While Sam found the pirate museum off-putting, Faith found it charming, much like she found the whole island. It functioned at a laid-back pace, which Faith wasn't accustomed to.

She knew they had to get somewhere with their research soon, they couldn't hide from Jasper forever, but she wanted to savor the time she was spending down here on this adventure, she even was enjoying who she was spending it with.

Faith and Sam strolled down Duval Street, weaving their way through the tourists that lined the sidewalks. They passed shop after shop, bar after bar while the smells of sweet suntan lotion and cheap vodka permeated the air. As they crossed the street, Faith spotted a dark blue sign above a large doorway.

"'Mel Fisher Museum,'" Faith read as they approached the large white building, "Name sound familiar to you?"

Sam shook his head.

"Windowless building, solid door, modern looking security system," He said, his eyes darting quickly to the cameras and sensors on the corners of the building. "No sign of a vaudeville skit out front, this place might just give us something useful. Shall we?"

Faith nodded and pushed open the heavy wooden door.

The drab, white facade on the outside of the museum was mimicked on the inside. Lit by stark, fluorescent lights, the building held two floors, the second a lofted balcony overlooking the center of the main room. Ugly black cabinets ringed its edges while pastel prints of seaside scenes attempted to accent the walls. The bottom floor consisted of four rows of display cases, all dazzlingly lit to showcase their contents.

"This looks like an old church," Faith observed.

"Probably was at one point. One of the old mission style ones," Sam elaborated. Faith and Sam entered the building slowly. Faith was puzzled. As she passed by each display case, she found almost all the items had price tags attached to them.

"I don't think this is a museum," Faith muttered, her brow furrowed in confusion.

"Oh, it is," Sam called from behind her, causing her to turn around towards the sound of his voice. "It's just all for sale."

Sam stood in front of a large printing close to the front doors of a middle-aged man in scuba gear. Mel Fisher.

"For sale?" Faith repeated, moving back next to Sam to get a look at the picture for herself. Sam skimmed the paragraphs of information that overlaid the photo.

"Looks like all of this is from the wreck of a Spanish ship that he found not too far from here. Almost 32 million dollars worth of treasure on board," Sam summed up for her.

"Holy shit that's a lot of money," Faith muttered, the information suddenly making her feel underdressed and underclass for the value of goods she was sure she was surrounded by. Meanwhile, the awe in Faith's tone caused Sam to let out a low chuckle.

"What?" She questioned, walking towards the middle of the gallery.

"Nothin'. It's just that, well, 32 million isn't that much. I mean, I've seen hauls bigger than that so I'm just sayin' it could be a lot more," He explained as he shoved his hands in his front pockets.

Faith turned and stared at Sam, a look of utter disbelief on her face.

"More than 32 million dollars?" She asked in a low voice.

Sam felt the worn down features of the coin from Libertalia in his pocket. The body warmed metal under his fingers triggered memories of being aboard _The Fancy_ , surrounded by mountains of treasure collected from every notable pirate of the 17th century. And being trapped under a beam while the boat went up in flames.

 _Almost ended up dead but I still found it,_ he thought to himself with a smirk.

"It was a lot more. Didn't get to keep much of it, but I _did_ find it," He emphasized by pointing the coin between his fingers at her. Faith quickly snatched the piece out of Sam's hand and flipped it over in her hands.

"Hmm, I wonder how much this is worth? Where is one of those appraiser guys?" She said, doing her best greedy cartoon villain voice.

"Uh, I don't think so!"

Sam plucked the coin out of Faith's hand. She cackled comically while Sam stowed his pirate treasure back safely in the pocket of his tan pants. Faith leaned a hip against the glass case next to her.

"You don't want to find out how much money something's worth? Since when?" She asked, crossing her arms in front of her.

"Since I know the rest of them are gone. It's the only one left. Also a reminder of a hell of a goddamn adventure. So you see, it's priceless. And since when do you care how much something's worth?"

His eyes narrowed down at her.

"I don't. Just gotta bust your balls a bit," Faith said with a smile and gave him a gentle, playful bump with her hip.

Sam gave a little smirk and followed Faith down the aisle. Faith glanced in each case, taking stock of what was in them. Pieces of pottery in one glass box, misshapen silver and copper coins marked with various crosses in another. She passed another full of rusted spikes and musket balls.

 _Such a steal! Only Three hundred dollars a piece!_ The thought made her shake her head incredulously. The sound of Sam letting out a low wolf whistle caused Faith to stop.

"Would ya look at that," Sam said, his large arms stretched wide and braced against the display below him. The light from inside the case illuminated his rough face, giving it a youthful, excited glow. Faith stepped next to him and looked down to find an extensive collection of emeralds and pearls. Sam thumped his finger above a massive, rough cut, forest green emerald with an $85,000 price tag.

"That's a nice one.'

"Yeah, I guess."

He turned his head quizzically towards her.

"You guess?"

"Yeah. Don't get me wrong, emeralds and gems are pretty. Like those two little bright ones right there would make an awesome set of earrings," She told Sam while pointing towards two small stones at the very back of the case with wide eyes, making him snicker.

"But as far as treasure goes, eh. Anyone can find gems, or silver, or gold. It's stereotypical treasure stuff."

"Treasure's treasure in my book, it's all worth money," Sam interjected.

Faith slid closer to Sam and lowered her voice.

"Now _our_ treasure,-"

"Our treasure?" He interrupted again.

"Our treasure which will come to be your treasure," She corrected, "There is nothing else like it in the world, it's got history. It's priceless. Kinda like that Libertalia coin in your pocket. You can't put a price on the story behind that."

Sam bobbed his head in a begrudging acceptance of her explanation.

"Remy thought that way about the Lincoln Bible when I showed it to him," Faith said. The mere mention of his name caused a sad fondness to creep into her voice. Sam's head dropped; the mere mention of Remy caused him to look at the floor in shame.

"The history of it excited him so much; it made it priceless to him. Just like what we're looking for," Faith finished. Sam slowly nodded in agreement while his eyes traveled up, finally able to meet Faiths.

"You really don't blame me at all for what happened to him?" Sam asked quietly.

"You didn't pull the trigger so no, I don't," She replied.

Sam knew she had told him this before, but it was an answer during the heat of the moment. Truth be told, Sam wasn't sure she still meant it weeks later, plenty of time for a person to think about things and change their mind. Thankfully, she didn't. Maybe now in the back of his mind, the blanket of blame that was smothering Sam from his chat with Nathan would ease a bit more.

"Can I help you?" A smooth, male voice echoed, causing the dense, slightly tense air between Faith and Sam to dissipate. A lanky man in a linen shirt appeared from behind one of the large cabinets with records on the balcony of the second floor.

"No, we're just looking, thanks," Faith called to him as he descended the spiral staircase with a rapid smoothness that came from repetition. The pair of palm tree patterned board shorts that he wore with his shirt accented the deep-set bright green eyes of his long face.

"All of our stones are inspected and certified for authenticity. We also offer multiple sizes and jewelry settings. Our smaller emeralds are a perfect size for a pair of simple yet understated earrings," He suggested. Faith's eyes shot up from the case as the hairs on the back of her neck began to prickle, despite the heat.

"See? I said the exact same thing to him!" She said, playing it off as coincidence.

"Well, I must confess. I did overhear snippets of your conversation," The man admitted with a bashful grin.

"Ah," Faith responded, the information making the anxiety in her start to wain.

"I know it's not overly polite, but it does help to talk up a sale. So sir, what do you think? Earrings for the wife?"

Faith turned her head towards Sam, a pursed lip grin on her face as she tried to contain her laughter.

"You know, she might say she is, but she isn't the fancy jewelry type. Nice try though. Let's grab a beer, more our speed. Right, babe?" The lie rolled off Sam's tongue without missing a beat, along with the term of endearment he tacked on so quickly, so comfortably, as if he had been calling Faith that for years. It was unsettling for him; it was too comfortable.

The laughter disappeared from behind Faith's grin as the lie that Sam produced so easily rang true for her.

"Right. One question first," She said, turning her attention back to the salesman with the vivid green eyes, "Do you have anything in here from the Civil War?"

He clucked his tongue and shook his head gently.

"Sorry, every we have in here predates it by a good hundred years," He answered, stuffing his hands in the front pockets of his shorts in a very 'awe shucks' fashion.

"Didn't think so. But, I had to ask. Let's go dear, the bar and the sunset awaits!" Faith said as she grabbed Sam's hand and pulled him towards the door.

"Thanks!" Sam called behind him and raised his free hand in a half-hearted wave.

"Have a nice evening!" The man called back as the heavy wooden doors closed behind Sam and Faith with a massive, echoed thud.

The man behind the counter slinked over to the phone that he kept near the staircase. An ancient yellow relic of a thing that still had a coiled cord and was attached to the wall. He jabbed the numbers quickly with a pointed finger. Three muffled rings passed before it connected with a statically click.

"Wallace? Eddie. Where's your boss? Well, get him on the phone. Oh, I'm pretty sure he's gonna wanna talk to me. Just-, ask him if that reward money is still up for grabs."  
He listened to the crackle of the phone as it changed hands on the other end.

"Hey cuz! Knew that would get you on the phone! It was Drake, can't miss that voice and that nose. Yeah, she was with him, why?

The man's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Her? I thought the reward money was for him."


	20. Everybody Hurts

Chapter 20

"You sure we're out of museums?" Faith asked.

"Yup, the drunk bastard's house was the last one on the list," Sam answered her.

"How do you know Hemingway was a drunk?"

"Weren't all the 'great' American authors drunks?"

Faith thought about it for a second and shrugged her shoulders in agreement.

As the prospects of finding a link between Mudd and Key West were beginning to dry up faster and faster, Faith and Sam decided to switch the focus of their search to the phrase branded into the barrel. The Third Artillery. They found no mention of it in any of the history books they had, which left what hope Faith had left waning. Sam on the other hand, who was trying to hold on to his diminishing optimism, had another idea.

Faith and Sam rounded the corner of the block. A basic, black wrought iron fence ringed the Key West Cemetery. Beyond the barrier sat 19 acres of eccentric island graveyard. Each headstone, each marker, each crypt had a unique twist that embodied the essence of the island itself. White mausoleums, faded with age, stretched along segments of the fence. They dwarfed the other single person crypts, five rows of final resting places resided in the tall buildings.

Sam strode through the gate and under the large metal archway into the cemetery as if on a breeze while Faith trudged slowly through, the unease of all of the dead people inside doing a tap dance on her stomach. Nervous perspiration began to form at her temples and mingled with the beads of sweat already there from the heat.

 _It's just a cemetery. It's not like you know anyone buried here. You got this Faith; you got this._

"You ok?"

The sound of Sam's voice shook her brain loose from the anxiety that was trying to grab hold.

"Yeah, I'm good," she said.

"Then let get moving," He said, nodding his head forward.

Faith blew out a heavy breath, quickly caught up to Sam and fell into step next to him to explore the sprawling graveyard.

A small, green sedan with Georgia plates parked underneath one of the massive palm trees which lined the street that led to the entrance to the cemetery. The man in the driver's seat watched as Sam and Faith walked up the wide lane, the graves flanking them on either side. He kept his distance. When he was sure he was out of earshot, he slid out of the driver's seat and closed the door behind him. Stowing a small handgun in the holster hidden under his billowing shirt and a cellphone in his pocket, he began to follow them. He kept a reasonable distance, but never took his beady eyes off the pair walking a couple of rows ahead of him.

Faith made sure to grab one of the maps for the self-guided walking tour of the cemetery when they came in. After a few blocks in, she produced the glossy pamphlet from her back pocket.

"Where's their section for the military?" Sam asked.

"I don't see a designated military part, so I'm guessing they're just spread all over," Faith shook her head and scanned the numerous gravestones around her.

"Shit," He grumbled as he produced a smoke from his shirt pocket, giving it a light.

 _Good thing it's a full pack,_ he thought to himself, _I'm gonna need it if I have to look at every goddamn tombstone in this place._

"So, I gotta ask, how do you know so much about a town you've never been to?" Sam asked, his words accented with an exhaled plume of smoke.

Faith smiled as she stared at the long worn in ruts of the cemetery road under her feet.

"When I was around 15 or 16, my mom decided that we should go on vacation when I graduated high school. She let me pick where we would go, and I picked Key West. Before we went, I wanted to know all about where we were going, so I read up on the city and its people and its history. You know, like the geek that I am. Then graduation came and..." Faith shrugged her shoulders with a defeated sigh.

Sam nodded knowingly while he walked beside her. He knew that expression. He'd spent most of his teenage life wearing it.

"We tried to go again when I graduated college. We got closer that time! We had the money for it then, and we were all ready to book it, but then my mom got sick, and that was that." Faith's voice went soft and quiet as she reached the end of her story.

"She was sick for a pretty long time, huh?" Sam said as his eyes scanned the text of the tombstones as they walked by them.

Faith picked at her cuticles. "Since I was eleven. That was the last time I remember her being healthy."

"Cancer?"

"Self-destruction."

Faith's answer caused Sam to look at her; his face wore a look of confusion.

"Ok," She began with a deep breath, "My parents loved each other. I mean, _really_ loved each other. I'm talking Gomez and Morticia Addams level of love; you know what I mean?"

Faith continued after Sam nodded his head, his full attention focus on Faith's story, the cemetery falling away around him.

"And that shit's rare. I knew that when I was little but I didn't really understand just how special and how rare that intense, 'compliment and complete each other' kind of love was until I was a lot older. Anyway, my parents went on vacation. There was an accident. My dad got hurt and ended up in a wheelchair with brain damage."

"How bad?" Sam interjected.

"Before it, he was a music teacher, did piano accompaniment that kinda thing. And after it, he couldn't play anymore; he couldn't remember how to either."

"That's a tough hand to be dealt," Sam said as he ground the butt of his cigarette into the grass with his boot.

"Yeah it was, and mom tried her best. Quit her job, took care of him full time. Then one day, two years later, he told her he was tired and put a shotgun in his mouth," Faith said very matter of fact.

"Jesus," Sam exclaimed in a low voice.

Faith's eyes hardened. "Yeah, I don't think he was there that day," she said through pursed lips.

Her retort caught him off guard and made him stop in his tracks while she continued forward without breaking her stride.

Sam wanted to tell her that she didn't have to talk about this. That she could tell him to fuck off and mind his own business and that would be alright, but Sam had a feeling this was something that needed to be said.

"Ma kept it together pretty well in the beginning. She was strong for me; I was strong for her. Between going back to work and getting me through high school she didn't really have time to fall apart, you know? Then I went to college, and it was like this depression just... consumed her. She stopped taking care of herself. I'd come home on weekends and take care of her, try and distract her, get her out of her head and out of the house. But it just didn't work. She kept fixating on dad and why he did it and why didn't she stop him and yadda, yadda, yadda. And after ten years, her body just broke down. Kidneys stopped working, infections all the time, her muscles atrophied. She couldn't walk anymore so she couldn't work. For ten years I tried to get her to fight, tried to make her want to live. But in the end, she said she was tired, and she didn't want to fight anymore. So I had to let her go," Faith finished with her head hung down. She willed herself to keep it together and not cry. Instead, she continued to stare down at her shoes intently while they walked.

Her story sat in Sam's throat like a sticky ball. Some of it had felt so chillingly familiar. A mother giving up on life, depression, suicide, being left alone. The story had echoed that of his teenage years with the loss of his mother and ending up in an orphanage with Nathan. For one of the few times in his life, he didn't know what to say. He wanted to tell her he understood, that he understood deep down on a level that only a person that has lost a parent at a young age could.

Instead, Sam put his hand on her shoulder and gently pulled her in close next to him while they walked. He tilted his head, letting it rest on the top of hers.

The action was more sincere and heartfelt for Faith than any 'I'm sorry' ever could be.

They walked like that for a few more steps. Unable to deal with the sad, maudlin feeling anymore, she broke from his grasp and turned around to face him while she walked backward.

"But hey! I made it! I'm here!" Faith said with a grin as she stretched her arms out. She saw Sam smile back at her, but the small guy in the distance caught her eye. He was only a row or two back from their current position. There were other people in the cemetery, tourists on bikes, the occasional work truck of the groundskeeper. What grabbed her attention was his shoes. White penny loafers with no socks that stood out under his light tan slacks.

 _Definitely not appropriate footwear, I don't care how Miami Vice it looks,_ she thought to herself.

The man in the insensible shoes looked ahead to see Faith staring at him. He quickly slowed his pace and began to find the small mausoleum next to him very interesting, giving it his full attention.

Despite the looming threat of being found by Jasper's people, Faith had tried to keep her paranoia to a minimum. She knew if she were suspicious and freaked out about every person she passed in Key West, she would be a complete mess. She had been doing well until now. Those out of place shoes though. They sent a quiver up her back as if someone dragged their thumbnail up her spine. Faith shook it off, keeping the expression on her face light and airy.

"Let me see the map," Sam asked, bringing himself to a stop and holding out his hand. Faith handed the sweat softened map to him.

Sam unfolded it carefully, his face contorted with a look of playful disgust.

"Didn't you just grab this at the gate?"

"Oh bite me. It's warm out," She said with a wave of her hand as she stood next to him to read over his shoulder.

"I think here's probably our best shot." Sam pointed at a small square with a picture of an anchor that read 'USS MAINE MEMORIAL.'

"Yeah, but let's snake our way through the place, see if any of the graves in here mention 3rd Artillery."

Sam refolded the damp map and put it in his back pocket.

"Alright sister, you lead the way."

Faith chanced a small glance behind her, the man in the white shoes was nowhere to be seen.

Faith made her way through the cemetery with a lightness that came from the person next to her, Sam. She had entered the graveyard full of dread and trepidation, all but convinced that a panic attack was looming in her not so distant future. Instead, she ended up talking about the one thing that had sent her into countless states of anxiety and discomfort for the past six months, her mother, her father even. She had never told anyone about what happened with her father before, in the hopes of keeping conversations airy; the mention of suicide tends to really bring down the room. When people asked her about him, she always said, 'he passed away' and left it at that. But something in Sam, in his kind eyes, in his easygoing personality, acted as a truth serum for her. It brought down walls in Faith that had been built up brick by brick, leaving a wall that was mortared together with avoidance and hardened solid with the passage of time. Faith's wall had started to crumble and the sheer terror that she had anticipated with it, hadn't come. Instead, it was a feeling of refreshment, cleansing, and comfort.


	21. The Rockafeller Skank

Chapter 21

For both Sam and Faith, walking through the cemetery was like walking through a macabre fun house. Instead of simple names and dates, many graves had epitaphs that read like love letters from their loved ones. Tombstones came in multiple shapes and sizes, from a simple granite block to an ornate porcelain conch shell. Gifts of money, beads and small bottles of liquor adorned the stones; all kept safe under the watchful eyes of the multiple lizards and iguanas living beneath the structures.

As they made their way through the graveyard, the conversation that had gotten so heavy became a distant memory to both of them with too much to see and comment on around them.

"Oooh! I like this one! 'Dedicated Fan of Julio Iglesias'". Faith read aloud.

"Nice. Don't think I'd want something like that on my tombstone though."

"Come on, 'Here lies Samuel Phineas Drake. A devoted fan of Depeche Mode'," Faith proclaimed with her hand raised high in the air for emphasis.

Sam turned to face Faith, leaning back against a hearty slab of granite stone.

"Alright. First of all, my middle name is not Phineas, no matter how much you want it to be."

"What is it then?" She pried.

"Not Phineas," He snorted.

"You're no fun," Faith said with a playfully phony pout.

"Second," Sam continued, ignoring her retort. "Depeche Mode? Really? _Depeche Mode_?"

"What's wrong with Depeche Mode?"

"Nothin'! Just that it's _Depeche Mode_. Who wants them as part of their epitaph?" He remarked while they began to walk further through the cemetery. They turned and passed a small mausoleum made of red bricks shaded by massive banyon trees and strangler figs. Faith glanced between the ropey roots of the tree only to be met with the stare of a stern, point face. The small man with the white shoes stared back at her. Faith's breath caught, making her clench her teeth. She scurried around the side of the mini brick building clear of the trees only to find nothing but more headstones.

"Now this one here, this is more my style," Sam said, oblivious to everything around him.

"What?" The words he had said not registering with her.

"'I told you I was sick.'" Sam said and gave a little chuckle.

"Uh huh, sounds like you," Faith said, her voice hollow as she stared off into the distance, looking for any sign of the man she was almost sure was following them.

"Remember the Maine!" Sam proclaimed as he strode forward towards a sectioned off part of the property.

Inside a small gated section stood almost a hundred simple white grave markers, clustered tightly together while a sizeable concrete aisle ran through the center of the group, separating them into two sides. In the middle stood a towering limestone statue of a sailor with an oar in hand, his other hand raised to his eyes as if to forever shield the sun while he scanned the horizon for enemy ships. Beneath the statue was a plaque, detailing the tragic story of the USS Maine and its doomed sailors that were laid to rest in Key West.

Faith caught up to Sam, who stood at the base of the statue, his eyes quickly reading the copper plaque affixed to it.

"February 15th, 1898. Remember the Maine," Sam repeated.

"I don't recall being told to remember the Maine. I was told to remember the Alamo though."

"She sunk in Havana Harbor and it helped to start the Spanish-American War," Sam told her.

"I didn't think US History was your strong suit. I thought that was more your brother's thing," Faith questioned, looking up at him.

"It is more Nathans thing but sunken ships though, that I pay attention to."

"Let me guess, especially the ones carrying gold?" She said with a raised eyebrow.

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

Faith chuckled to herself and meandered around the graves, checking each engraving for the 3rd Artillery. Nothing. They had reached the end of the road. Not a single inscription about the elusive military troupe. Faith met Sam back at the statue. She stared out into the distance, scanning the landscape with a frustrated, sour look on her face. For the first time, she was starting to appreciate Sam's desire for a simple map with a big, red X on it.

"Can I see the map again?" She asked Sam with a deep sigh.

Sam, busy reading the plaque on the statue still, took the now crumpled map from his back pocket and handed it to Faith. Faith shook it open, smoothing it against the side of the pillared statue. Orientating herself towards the rest of the property, she ran her finger over the slim lines on the map, which indicated the access roads around the cemetery. As she ran her finger over each part, her eyes flicked up to the graves, looking out to verify and remember if they had searched that area.

"Jewish section," She muttered to herself, gazing out towards the right. She recognized the far gray fence that they had walked through earlier adorned with the Star of David.

Faith caught a glimpse of movement out of her left eye. So many lizards here! She thought to herself. Turning to see how big the iguana was, she instead caught the final stride of a loose tan pant leg and a familiar white penny loafer before it quickly disappeared behind a nearby family size, grey mausoleum. Her stomach churned.

 _Ok, that's it. I gotta say something. I don't care if it makes me look paranoid._

"Hey Sam," She prompted him calmly, folding back up the map in her hands.

"Yeah?"

"I think we're being followed."

"Yeah, I saw them."

Faith's head snapped towards him.

"Them?" She questioned with wide eyes.

"Two of them. The Don Johnson wannabe who's been tailing us since we got here and then the squirrely lookin' guy with the really big ears hanging around the front gate. Jasper might wanna think about hiring people that blend in a little better because these ding dongs-," Sam ended his thought with a whistle and an eye-roll before he stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it quickly.

"How'd you know?"

"I've been in this life long enough to know what the bad guys look like. Now c'mon."

Sam gently turned Faith by the shoulder and led her out of the section for the USS Maine Memorial. Faith walked next to Sam towards the back section of the cemetery, an older part with more family owned large crypts. Her jaw was clenched tight, her spine rigid as she tried desperately to resist the urge to look wildly around her.

"What the hell are we gonna do?" Faith whispered furiously.

"Well, first thing sweetheart is you're gonna have to calm the hell down. Second thing, I'm gonna finish my smoke and _then_ we're gonna get out of here, ok?" Sam said with a calm, confident grin while a lazy jet of smoke escaped out his nostrils.

"Yeah? How?"

"Trust me; I've gotten out of tighter spots than this."

Sam had kept tabs on the two men since they had entered the cemetery, both of them stuck out like sore thumbs, one following too close while the other lagged too far behind. Also, not to mention their non-touristy clothes and none too subtle communicative glances to one another. He was confident that he could get both Faith and himself out of the cemetery and lose them no problem, but the only wildcard for Sam was if either one of Jasper's goons was stupid enough to pull a gun in a place with other people.

Sam steered the two of them down a small road that cut through one of the more significant sections of the graveyard. As the small mausoleum where Mr. Pennyloafer was hiding got closer, Faith felt herself begin to panic.

"Sam, please tell me you have a plan."

He flicked the butt of his cigarette in the dusty indent of the road in front of them, making sure to step on it as they stalked ahead.

"Here's what we're gonna do." He chanced a glance back towards the front gate to see that the man with large ears, the one he had been calling Dumbo in his head, had started to make his way towards them to try and pin Sam and Faith between the two goons.

"When we hit the crypt he's hiding behind, run. You take off towards those gravestones up ahead and find a hiding place. I'll take care of these bozos."

The distance between the two of them and the mausoleum grew shorter with each step. A couple of paces before, Sam gently squeezed Faith's shoulder and shot her a look of confidence. Faith nodded and gave him a couple of quick taps on his side with the back of her hand for reassurance before she took off running.

As soon as Faith put her part of the plan in motion, Sam climbed atop the sturdy granite stone next to him, leaped one foot onto the shoulder of the nearby statue of the Virgin Mary and pushed off. He jumped and clutched onto the edge of the little gray building.

"Blessed Mother, please don't send me to hell for that one," He muttered regretfully under his breath as he grunted and pulled himself quickly to his feet on the roof.

Sam ran across the top of the building. He took a split second to see Faith running ahead before he launched himself off. Sam landed on top of the man in the white suit who had just started to give chase. Tackling him, he fell with a knee in the middle of the man's back, knocking the wind out of him as he hit the ground stomach first with a loud 'oof.' Roughly, Sam turned him over and gave him a quick right jab to the face, making sure that he would stay down.

Picking himself up, Sam turned just in time to see the other goon swing and land two quick punches to his gut. He doubled over, letting a wheezy swear escape his lips. Dumbo grabbed Sam by the back of the head and slammed his knee into Sam's face, driving his kneecap into his eyebrow. Sam sunk to his knees as edges of the world began to blur. Not bothering to check on his friend in the white shoes, the man with the big ears took off after Faith.

Faith found herself in an older section of the cemetery where the graves were above ground and double, even triple stacked in long rows that looked like crazy towers of white LEGOS. With the tombs packed close together, she knew this would be the best spot to hide and lose them. Breathing heavily, she took a quick look behind her. The man in white shoes and Sam were on the ground while another quickly approached. Breathing heavily, Faith squeezed herself between the two large white structures on her right. _C'mon, think thin, think thin,_ she chanted in her head as she shimmied her body through the gap. The back of her jeans and the front of her shirt scraping against the close walls. Emerging on the other end, she backed up flat against the side. Listening quietly, Faith heard the sound of heels being scuffed along the ground, the sound getting closer. She turned and peaked around the corner, and waited for her bad guy to come into sight. She had formulated a quick plan to double back around him and take off in the other direction at the first glimpse of him. Her throat closed and her mind went blank when she saw a handgun gripped between Dumbo's hands just before she saw his face walk by the small crevice.

Faith took careful, silent steps as she backed away slowly down the narrow corridor behind her. Despite what had happened in Illinois, she really hadn't thought of the bad guys having guns. Not here in a public place.

As she tried to talk the sudden terror out of her brain, a large hand came around the side of her head and clamped over her mouth and stifled a startled yelp. Another pushed her shoulder back into the side of the column of tombs. Faith's back hit the hard surface while her eyes flicked up in anger as she prepared to scream. It died before it began when she found her face inches away from Sams.

Sam quickly took his hand off her shoulder and held it up defensively; he remembered how she had reacted when he did it the first time the night they met. He waited a moment until he was sure she had her wits about her before he removed his hand from her mouth.

"You alright?" He asked as quietly as possible.

"He's got a gun," Faith breathed shakily.

"Shit." There was his wild card.

"Sam."

"Yeah?"

"Sam." She repeated his name while she stared straight ahead, her mouth slightly open as she breathed heavily.

"What?" He urged.

"Look," She said, nodding her head towards the gravestones across the way.

Three iguanas sunned themselves on the crumbling, cracked covers of two side-by-side in-ground plots. The largest lizard, near the base of the two headstones, sauntered off into the grass, which let Sam clearly read the markers. ROBERT WORTHINGTON. SERGEANT. 3RD ARTILLERY 1862 – 1895. STEPHEN MCCALEB. PRIVATE. 3RD ARTILLERY 1881 – 1904.

"Son of a bitch," Sam said with a small grin, rubbing his jaw with his hand.

"You know what this means?" Faith asked in a low voice, despite the sparkle of excitement in her eyes.

"We're in the right place," They said in unison, sounding happier than they both had been in days, despite having to whisper for fear of being shot.

That gnawing feeling had been festering inside both of them since they arrived. That question that gained strength like a brewing storm in their minds every time they went to a new location on the island, just to come up empty-handed at the end of each day:

 _What if Remy was wrong and we're looking in the wrong place?_

This was their first definitive proof. These graves were their answer. Remy was right.

"Then let's get the hell out of here so we can find our treasure. Go in here," He motioned with his head to another one of the narrow gaps next to them. Faith slid in between the two structures while Sam followed in close behind her. Faith peered out from her side, finding no one. She turned her head to tell Sam what she had seen when Sam saw the sight of the gun come into his view beside him. Reacting, he grabbed the arm and thrust himself out of the gap, slamming Dumbo's wrist against the far edge of the pillar. Sam felt a hollow pop in the man's wrist, causing the goon to cry out in pain. His fingers slid open, letting the gun drop. Faith scooted out from the crevice in the wall and saw the gun on the ground. _I hate these fucking things_ , she thought. Instinctively, she picked it up and pitched it as hard as she could over the nearby fence and into the street. By this point, Dumbo had regained his faculties. He blocked an incoming overhead blow by Sam and kicked him squarely in the jewels, causing Sam to sink to his knees immediately. Deciding to take advantage of his low blow, the big-eared goon socked him in the jaw and splayed him out on the grass.

Faith knew she should be running, but she knew at heart that she couldn't leave Sam like this. A kick in the nuts was a vile, underhanded and depraved tactic in her book. She looked around quickly and saw a large porcelain vase sitting at the base of a nearly sand colored gravestone. A large bundle of lilies rested inside, which Faith removed hastily and set down on the base of the grave.

"I'm so sorry Ma'am," she said as she grabbed the large lip of the vase with two hands and swung it in a wide arc. It crashed against one of the large ears on the side of Dumbo's head before he could land another shot on a prone Sam. The vase cracked and left the goon knocked out cold. Faith pushed him quickly off the top of Sam. Offering her hand, Sam took it gratefully; the shots to the body had already begun to take their toll. With Faith next to him to steady him if need be, Sam started to walk as quickly as he could towards the side exit of the cemetery.

Almost at the large off-kilter black gate, Faith scanned the area behind her. She saw where Sam had initially taken down the man with the white shoes. The spot where Sam had left him unconscious was now just a patch of depressed, bent grass.

"Oh fuck, where'd the other guy go?" Faith asked as she scanned the surrounding graves frantically.

Both heard a slight whistle, followed by the resounding TANG of a bullet ricocheting off the fence a mere five feet away.

"Shit! Move!" Sam yelled, giving Faith a push forward to get her running while he followed, ignoring the pain in his groin. They darted through the gate and down the nearby side street, zig-zagging between cars and trees, trying to not leave an open shot for the asshole following him. Faith could hear the slap of the soles of his shoes on the pavement behind them but gratefully not the sound of a gunshot, yet. Sam kept up with Faith, steering her down side streets and through alleys.

"I can't keep running Sam!" Faith huffed, barely able to get the words out.

"Yes, you can!" "I wasn't made for running!" She yelled. Faith looked to her right. The water's edge, not two blocks away. An idea clicked in her head.

"Follow me!" She ordered Sam.

Finding a new burst of speed, she veered right down a small alleyway for the local trash trucks. With Sam right behind her, she used the large garbage bins and piles of boxes left to the sides of the alley for cover. Quickly, she turned right down a driveway. She took a fleeting glance to get a position on their bad guy, who looked to be a worse runner than she was as he was lagging a whole block behind them. Faith made a sudden left towards the ocean. A large ultra-modern hotel sat on its shore with a large parking lot in front of it and Faith happened to know what was on the other side of it.

"Straight off the end! Under the boardwalk!" Faith yelled.

"What?" Sam huffed, right behind her but he was rapidly losing steam, the pain in his groin radiating down his legs and up into his stomach.

Faith gave it her all, the last bit of power she had as she zipped up between the rows of parked cars. She hit the boardwalk that encircled that side of the island for almost a mile.

After three quick strides, Faith leapt off the edge of the boardwalk, held her nose, and she jumped into the warm, salty water. Underneath, she felt the water around her move suddenly as Sam plunged into the ocean next to her. Both made their way underwater and resurfaced underneath the solid wooden boardwalk above them. Sam and Faith tread water quietly as they watched between the slats. A familiar pair of white penny loafers appeared above their heads. Faith held onto Sam's shoulder and one of the supporting beams, making sure the wake from the nearby boats didn't bob her out into view. Sam watched as their goon looked around wild-eyed. He scanned the water and the faces of the droves of tourists that walked the path daily. It was a Key West highlight of the island after all; A point Faith found during her longtime research.

Frustrated, white shoes turned and stalked back through the parking lot and resorted to sniffing around the cars for Sam and Faith.

Underneath the promenade, Sam let out a chuckle of relief. His thoughts turned towards Faith. He wasn't sure what to say to her. Randomly jumping in water to get away from bad guys was a move he knew well and it seemed to just come second nature to her. She could think on the fly, not to mention finding evidence of the Third Artillery. After a few moments of thinking, Sam decided he wasn't going to say anything, but he knew what he was going to do.

 _Sorry, Sully. Like I said, I do things my way._

As Sam moved in close to kiss Faith, her hands shot up out of the water, splashing them both with salty sea water.

"Forts!" She exclaimed.

"What?" Sam shook his head incredulously as she caught him off guard.

"Forts! The Third Artillery! They gotta be stationed around here somewhere! Why didn't we do this before? We need to check out the forts!" Faith said excitedly with a large smile on her face, making Sam grin with her renewed enthusiasm.

"You're something else; you know that right?"

"Yeah, I know. But forts Sam! Forts!"

"Forts, tomorrow. Hotel and beer, now."

"You know, if we float that way for about half a mile, we'll end up across the street from our hotel," Faith said, pointing behind Sam.

"Why would we do that?"

"Honestly? Because floating is much easier than walking right now."

"Perfect cause my balls are killing me," Sam groaned as he began to bob his way down the shoreline, making Faith chuckle while she drifted through water next to him.


	22. Personal Jesus

Chapter 22

Days had passed since the close call at the cemetery with Nox's men. After seeing the Third Artillery inscription on the tombstones, full on research mode was on. Faith and Sam both knew that they were in a race with Jasper Nox for information, for treasure, and that, one way or another, the end was near. The days of the week followed one another quickly, one rolling into the next, a giant snowball of days and data that was proving to be empty. Of the three forts in the Florida Keys they had scoured, they were 0 for three on leads for where they were garrisoned.

The next day brought a late and hazy Sunday morning. Faith had woken up later than Sam, something that wasn't entirely out of the ordinary, except instead of the typical twenty minutes, it took Faith an extra two hours to get out of bed.

As Sam came in from his smoke, Faith emerged from the bathroom, dressed in a black tank top and army green shorts. Her hair hung in frizzy clumps around the glasses on her face and the almost vacant, tired look she had solidified her lack of enthusiasm for the day ahead.

"Morning," Sam greeted her, putting his smokes down on the table.

"Hey."

"I didn't think you were gonna wake up today."

Faith offered Sam a half-hearted shrug of her shoulders, causing a feather of concern to blow into his brain. Something seemed a little off. Noticing the uneasiness in his eyes, Faith scratched her scalp vigorously and quickly threw her hair up into a sloppy ponytail. Roughly rubbing her face to get the blood running, she stood in front of the notebooks and textbooks in front of them.

"Alright, where did we leave off?"

"We got nothin' out of the names from the gravestones. I say we go back to Fort Taylor-"

"We've been there," Faith said flatly, cutting him off.

"We go back to Fort Taylor and see if there is anything we missed. Officer names, other regiments."  
"We've been there, twice. We got all we could. We followed up on every bit of it. Nothing." Faith replied, her arms crossed in front of her chest as she leaned back against the wall.

Sam offered a deep sigh. He didn't want to admit it, but he was starting to run out of ideas.

"Cemetery then. Go back through,-"

"Sam," Faith interrupted, then offered up an annoyed sigh.

"We go back through and look for more members of the Third Artillery," Sam said, talking over Faith's groans of protest.

"We've already been through there already! Multiple times! Every one that we found, nothing. Not a single fucking thing!" Faith waved her arms in frustration as she started to pace.

Sam leaned on the table. He cocked his head to the side and stared at Faith, his own frustration starting to percolate as well. "I'm starting to run dry on ideas here sister; you got any more you want to throw out there?"

"You're supposed to be the famous treasure hunter, think of more treasure hiding places!" She said, her voice raised to a frustrated peak.

"Hey!" Sam said defensively.

Faith closed her eyes and massaged the tender spots above her eyebrows.

"Nope, I can't do this today. Can't do it," She said, shaking her head slowly, the tips of her fingers still pressing against her forehead.

"What?" Sam questioned as he watched Faith stalk across the room towards their duffels.

"I can't do this today Samuel. Not today," She said as she grabbed a handful of crumpled bills. Folding them hastily, she stood up and stuffed them in the front pocket of her shorts.

"I need a break," Faith declared and headed to the room door, sliding on her sneakers.

"If you come up with any great ideas, beautiful. In the meantime, I'll be at the bar."

Faith shut the door behind her with a resounding slam. Sam glanced at the time on the small microwave of their kitchenette.

11:02 AM.

 _What the hell was that?_ Sam thought to himself.

Sam knew better than to follow her. They had been in close quarters with each other for the last three weeks, and the pressure to find what Dr. Mudd had hidden before Jasper compounded with each passing day. With no real time to recharge, it was just a matter of time before one of them snapped; therefore Sam had no qualms about amusing himself for a couple of hours and letting Faith have some space.

Sam sat at the small table in the hotel room, half-heartedly flipping through an oversized glossy book about Key West Marinas. As the time passed, the cigarette breaks became more and more frequent. After two hours, Sam pushed the books away, a sour lemon look of disgust on his face. He was getting nowhere.

Defeated for the day, Sam grabbed a fresh, cold six pack out of the mini fridge and plopped down on the bouncy hotel bed. Flipping the TV on to a local channel, he opened himself a beer. As the TV played a program on the dangers of invasive species of fish to the Keys ecosystem, Sam let his mind wander back to Mary Todd Lincoln, Samuel Mudd, and their surprising friendship. Taking the pirate coin out of his front pocket, he began to dance it over his fingers, flipping it expertly end over end as it passed each knuckle. The familiar motion calmed the unintentional nicotine surge he had caused with his frequent smoke breaks.

 _I still don't get it. How do you forgive anybody after they've killed someone, especially someone you love? Alright, he didn't pull the trigger, but that's beside the point. He helped out the bad guy. Mudd was right, she musta been_ _an angel or somethin' cause I sure as shit don't think I could._

Lost in thought, the minutes flipped by, turning into hours. Sam was oblivious to the time that had passed. He had mastered the art of amusing himself, having spent a good chunk of his adult life learning to ignore the passage of time or he would have been apt to lose his mind in that 9x9 cell.

It wasn't until he reached for a beer from his second six-pack and found the cardboard container empty that he finally noticed the time on the microwave.

4:52 PM

Sam grabbed his cellphone. No messages.

 _Shit, I better go and make sure she's still alright._

Slipping the room key, the coin, and his smokes into his shirt pocket, he stepped out into the muggy afternoon and headed towards their bar.

With 52 bars on the tiny island, Faith and Sam had designated The Green Parrot _their_ bar. It was situated a block away from their hotel, had stiff drinks, decent food and was never crammed with tourists. With an atmosphere that seemed to cater more towards the less rowdy crowd, it was the perfect place for them to drink and talk about research without having to yell over a woo-hooing bachelor party of twenty-somethings.

Sam rounded the edge of the block and under the green awnings that lined the corner of the building. A wall of cold air hit him in the face as he walked through the doorway, causing goosebumps to appear on his forearms.

After their third visit, Faith had nicknamed the decor Taxidermist Goes Tropical. The upper walls were lined with mounted tropical birds while intricate mobiles of seashells hung from the ceiling. Random animal mosaics of beer bottle caps decorated the walls and strands of clear rope lights edged the bar and which gave off a comfortable glow after the sun had set.

Sam looked toward the square bar situated in the middle of the room and caught the eye of Ronni, the young female bartender who worked most of the nights Sam and Faith had stopped in. Ronni set down the tray of clean glasses she carried in front of her and gave a quick wave to Sam before she pointed to the side of the bar behind her. Sam offered her a toothless grin as a thank you and headed to the back side of the bar.

Faith sat by herself on her bar stool, eyes closed, happily bouncing along with the Kinks song that was playing over the bar speakers. The remains of her latest drink was pushed to the far edge of the bar where it eagerly awaited its replacement. Sam slid a bar stool next to Faith, the scraping sound from the metal legs on the dull hardwood pulling her out of the happiness of the song.

"This alright?" Sam asked.

Faith nodded.

Sam sat down next to her while Ronni set a fresh drink in front of Faith.

"Ah! Thank you, dear," Faith said, gratefully taking a long sip from the straw with a content smile on her face.

"No problem. Usual for you?" Ronni asked, more for verification than permission, her hands already pouring Sam three fingers worth of scotch on the rocks and setting the drink down in front of him.

Sam nodded and muttered thanks, not taking his attention away from Faith.

"So," Faith said, letting the straw drop from her lips back into her drink, "Any major discoveries?"

Sam shook his head.

"Didn't think so."

Sam took a sip of his drink, the liquid flooding his belly with a dull fire.

"I don't know how you can drink that stuff," Faith said, pointing to his glass with a disgusted look on her face.

"You do realize that scotch and whiskey are the same things, just mine's Scottish?" He asked her.

"Yours is Scottish, _but_ it's also made from a different grain mash. See, my bourbon here is mostly corn mash while _yours_ is made with mostly barley," She said with a know-it-all smirk.

Sam's raised his eyebrows and gave a nod of approval.

"You know your whiskey," He said.

"You bet your sweet bippy I do," She said, raising the straw to her lips, "You know what else I know about it?"

"What?"

"Yours is disgusting while mine is delicious," She gave him a broad smile and went back to sipping her drink quickly through her straw.

Sam chuckled, sipping his own. He loved seeing her this relaxed, her personality that she liked to keep so guarded and downplayed on full display. Every time Sam got to see it, he managed to learn something new about her. Tonight, he discovered that she knew about whiskey. He liked drunk Faith and was relieved that whatever had troubled her this morning seemed to be gone.

"So, I was thinkin' Mudd-"

Faith held her hand up and shushed him.

"No, shhhhh. Just no. No work."

"What?" He questioned.

"Shhhh," Faith said, drawing it out long and holding her index finger against his mouth. It reminded Sam of a little kid shushing another in a library; He pursed his lips together behind her finger to stop himself from laughing.

"No work today. It's a holiday, and there is no work on holidays, by decree of the United States Post Office post office. There is no mail. Therefore there shall be no work," She prattled dramatically, taking her finger away and using it to emphasize her point instead.

"I don't think there's a holiday today sweetheart," Sam said, taking another sip.

"There is, it may not be a holiday for everyone, but it's a holiday for me!"

Sam wracked his brain, trying to think of what holiday she could be talking about. Yom Kippur? Roshashana? Easter?

Faith held her glass up to Sam, the melting ice cubes rattling against each other.

"Happy Mother's Day Sam,"

Sam's heart dropped into his stomach. He hadn't thought about Mother's Day in over thirty years. He could remember that it was on a Sunday, but not what month it was. It had been a very long time since he had last celebrated a Mother's Day. He had Nathan to keep him preoccupied, and it wasn't a holiday that was talked about, let alone celebrated at an orphanage. Sam assumed this had to be the first one for Faith since her mother had died six months ago.

Sam offered up his glass in return.

"Happy Mother's Day Faith," He replied.

He clinked his glass against hers and the sadness that lurked underneath the drunken glassiness in Faith's eyes as their glasses touched made his heart break for her. Sam tipped his drink back, draining the rest of it before setting it down on the far edge of the bar.

Faith pushed the sadness she was feeling away. She refused to be a crying, depressed drunk. Not today. Today was going to be a good day, no matter how much she had to drink to make it that way.

"Ronni! Can I ask you a favor?" Faith said in a sweet sing-song voice.

"What's up dear?" Ronni asked, her hands already working at fresh drinks for the both of them.

"Can you please play some Depeche Mode?" Faith asked.

Ronni set the drinks down in front of them as a groan escaped Sam. "I think I can do that. Any particular one?"

"Dealer's choice," Faith answered.

Ronni laughed and returned to the other side of the bar where the sound system was kept.

"You're doing this to bug me, aren't you?" Sam asked.

"Maybe just a little bit," Faith said with a wink getting up from her barstool. Feeling just a little bit wobbly, grabbed Sam's shoulder to steady herself.

"Alright. Be right back. I have to pee! Don't go anywhere!" She said as she stalked towards the bathroom, her voice getting louder as she approached the whitewashed door of the ladies room.

Sam chuckled and shook his head a bit.

"You're girlfriend's a trip," Ronni said to Sam, putting three shot glasses on the bar in front of him.

"That she is," He replied, not bothering to correct her.

A Depeche Mode song began to play loudly over the speakers called 'Personal Jesus.' Although he wasn't a fan of the band, he knew the song very well.

"Ha ha! Perfect Ronni!" Faith called from the bathroom door with a laugh. She closed her eyes and let the music move through her as she made her way to the bar, singing to herself and dancing as she went.

Sam swiveled around on his bar stool and watched as Faith danced heedlessly towards the bar. Her hips rolled and dipped provocatively to the steady beat of the song while she ran her fingers through her hair.

 _Holy shit_ , Sam thought as a throbbing heat radiated throughout his body, his cheeks turning flush like an embarrassed teen. He watched her ass as it turned and swayed towards him, her bare shoulders in her tank top as they rolled with the beat and the content smile on her face as she moved like no one was watching her.

"Reach out and touch Faith. Your own...personal...Jesus," She sang to Sam who she had caught staring at her. After her quick impromptu serenade, Faith laughed and continued dancing with herself back to her spot at the bar.

He bit down on his bottom lip with a hunger that had continued to grow within him over the past three weeks.

When she finally made it back, Sam cleared his throat and turned back towards Ronni behind the bar while Faith used his shoulder again to steady herself onto her seat.

 _C'mon Samuel, get it together. She's just a little drunk; it's not like she was puttin' on a show for you,_ he thought as Ronni filled the shot glasses with a good whiskey.

"On the house guys. You're good people," She said before drinking one of the shots herself and heading back to refill some drinks on the other side of the bar.

"Thanks, Roni!" Faith said happily before taking one of the small glasses in her hand. Noticing the song had changed, Faith turned towards Sam.

"Now admit it, Depeche Mode songs aren't that bad," Faith said staring him down with a smile.

 _I know that look. She's given me that look before_ , Sam thought before the moment clicked into place.

"I don't mind that one," Sam admitted as they both took their shots at the same time and set the empty glasses down on the bar top. Faith grabbed them and pushed them away from the two of them and bounced in place merrily to the new song playing over the speakers.

"So uh, I gotta ask," Sam said.

"What?"

"Actually, it's more like satisfying a curiosity." He revised.

"And what's that?"

Sam stretched to his right towards the plastic container on the inner lip of the bar that held the napkins and fruity garnishes. He grabbed a bright red maraschino cherry and held them in front of Faith by its stem.

"I believe you said something about cherry stems," Sam said suggestively.

Faith put her head down on the bar, hiding her face in her arms while her body shook with a drunken, embarrassed laughter. It was an off-handed flirt she had said to him weeks ago. She never thought he would remember her saying it, let alone ask her to prove it. She chanced a look at Sam, peering her right eye sheepishly over the crook of her elbow. He tilted his head with a suggestive smile which just caused her to hide her face and her laughter to turn to giggles. It had been a while since she had been this drunk, feeling this free, this flirty, and this sexy and confident and she was enjoying it entirely too much.

After a moment, she lifted her head and took a couple of deep breaths to compose herself, wiping away the tears that had accompanied her laughter. She cleared her throat and swiveled to face Sam who still held the cherry out in front of him.

"Well?" He asked expectantly.

Faith took the cherry out of his hand and put it stem and all in her mouth. He watched with rapt attention as her tongue poked against the inside of her cheek and her jaw shifted around randomly, her eye contact with him breaking only for a few random seconds to glance up as her brain worked in time with her tongue. A sheen of sweat formed across Sam's brow in spite of the icy cold air that was being pumped through the room.

After less than thirty seconds, Faith's mouth stilled as she smiled. She reached between her lips and removed the cherry stem, perfectly knotted in the middle.

"That's...that's an impressive skill," Sam said coolly. He let his eyes drop to the floor as his lip twitched along with some of his other parts, causing him to shift in his seat.

"I think so," She said thoughtfully, dropping the knotted red stem on a nearby cocktail napkin.

Sam ran a hand through his hair and let out a heavy breath.

"Alright," She announced, "Now, I'd also like to satisfy a curiosity that I have," She said, resting her elbow on the bar, leaning towards him inquisitively.

"And what would that be?" He said in a slight drunken slur as the booze took hold. Sam, planted his own elbow on the bar, mockingly mimicking her actions, and brought his face near hers.

 _I can't wait to hear this. It's gotta be somethin' ridiculous, like if I've ever eaten flan or rode a goat._

The thought started to bring a chuckle to his lips until Faith suddenly leaned in and pressed her mouth against his.


	23. How Much Fun

Chapter 23

 _Whoa._

Despite everything leading up to this, this was the last thing Sam thought Faith would do.

Sam lingered for a moment, letting himself feel her warm and flush lips against his before he pulled away, shaking his head.

"No, nuh uh, nope, bad idea," He muttered, his eyes cast down while he frantically patted at his pants pocket for his wallet.

"Oh come on Sam, I need to know!" Faith said, holding onto his shoulder again as she stood up while Sam had finally managed to extract his wallet and search for a couple of twenties.

Still holding his muscled shoulder, Faith leaned in close.

"I gotta know if you're as tasty as you look," She whispered in his ear, running her finger over the faded tattooed birds down the side of his neck. "Ok, time to go," Sam said loudly, hastily throwing a handful of bills on the bar to cover their tab as well as Faith's day of drinking. He stood up quickly, causing Faith to stagger backward, her hand dropping from his shoulder with a pout. Trying his best to avoid eye contact with her, Sam came behind Faith, took her by the shoulders and steered her towards the door.

"Have a good night, Ronni," He called back towards the bar.

"Thanks, guys! Have a good one!" The bartender replied with a raised hand.

"Bye Ronni!" Faith bellowed, turning suddenly to wave which sent her awkwardly crashing into Sam. She smacked him clumsily on the side of the head with her outstretched hand, her body bouncing off of his like a tennis ball. He grabbed her around the waist with one hand to keep her from falling backward, trying to steer her back in the right direction with the other.

"Jesus Christ," He muttered under his breath as he marched her down the sidewalk.

"Come on, that was fun!" Faith said happily regaining her composure and walking briskly ahead on her own.

"Uh huh," Sam said absentmindedly, quickly lighting a cigarette. He needed one. Desperately. The nice buzz he had managed to attain vanished when he had felt the hot puffs of Faith's breath in his ear.

Faith turned and shuffled backward, so she could look at him as they walked towards their hotel.

"You know what else is fun?" She asked.

"Checkers? Parcheesi? Water Polo?" He offered.

"Sex," She said in a comically hushed voiced.

"Faith."

"Sam."

He pulled on his smoke; the deep drag causing the cigarette to burn down quickly.

Even though he had already almost kissed her a week ago, he was uncertain. He liked Faith, he honestly did. He hadn't been this attracted to a woman in a very long time or found himself caring as much and as quickly as he did about her. Because of that, the last thing he wanted to do was lead her on and hurt her.

Although.

Faith said it was just about having fun. And they were both consenting adults. There were no promises made or any ideas about expectations of something more serious.

Except, there were promises made.

Sullivan. He had explicitly asked Sam to keep it in his pants and stay away from Faith. Since when did Victor give a shit about who he hit the sheets with? Sam had meant to ask Faith about her connection to Victor after that night on the phone, but with the craziness that had ensued shortly after that, it was a conversation that had slipped his mind.

But Sam also couldn't help but crave the jolt electricity that he felt every time she touched him, still feeling the pleasurable aftershocks of the finger she had trailed down his neck. It had been far too long since he'd felt the fun and excitement of being with someone new.

Faith turned back around as they rounded the corner, the bright blue neon sign of their hotel flickered to life at the end of the block.

Sam walked behind Faith, quietly smoking while his conscious continued to argue with itself.

Faith reached the light blue door of their hotel room while Sam, still a few paces behind her, stalked through the small parking lot.

"C'mon Sam! Let's satisfy one more curiosity!" She said loudly as she stopped in front of their door.

Sam flicked the butt of his cigarette towards the back of the parking lot and headed up the sidewalk to their room silently.

Faith sighed. "I think it'd be fun," She said to herself. Still drunk, she pawed at the pocket of her shorts, her room key stuck inside of it and unwilling to come out.

She let out a frustrated huff.

"Hey, do you got your-"

Faith felt Sam's large hand push her shoulder back against the door frame while his other reached out and cradled the nape of her neck. Eyes open wide; she let out a small squeal of surprise before he brought his mouth down to hers, capturing her lips in a hungry kiss. A slight moan escaped from deep inside her as she closed her eyes. She allowed her body to melt against his, running her hands up and over the sweat-damp t-shirt that clung to his muscular chest. Her arms encircled his neck, letting her breathe in Sam's scent; A mixture of deodorant, cologne, laundry soap and cheap smokes layered atop a smell of sweaty, primal male. It was a smell that comforted her and sent a livewire shock through her in simultaneous harmony. Sam let his hand drift down her back, pulling her in close as he darted his tongue between her open lips, grazing against Faiths insistently until it intertwined and danced with his with equal hunger and need. Faith pulled away to catch her breath. The amber light of the dimming day found the flashes of gold in Sam's hazel eyes, like small flecks of excitement while they smoldered with lust as he stared at her.

"So, one more curiosity?" He asked. Sam let his fingers run through Faith's wild auburn hair, his head tilted to the side with a cocky, hungry stare.

"Maybe two," Faith said, holding up two fingers in a sly playfulness.

"That's my girl," He said with an impish smile before bringing her in for an eager kiss. Sam's hands traveled down Faith's back and over the curve of her ass and with one swift motion, lifted her off the ground.

"Holy crap, I'm airborne!" Faith exclaimed, instinctively wrapping her legs around Sam's toned body while her arms held on around his neck for dear life.

"I got you sweetcheeks, now grab the key from my pocket before we end up givin' the neighborhood a show," Sam said with a laugh, his hands firmly gripped on her ass as he leaned against the edge of the door frame.

"Oh come on, who doesn't like putting on a show now and then? Ups the thrill factor," Faith murmured against his neck, leaving a trail of hot kisses and gentle bites on his skin while her hand grabbed the slim keycard from his shirt pocket.

Sam closed his eyes and leaned his head back, her lips nibbled along his collarbone making him groan.

"Door. Now," He commanded in a breathy voice.

Faith reached over and slipped the keycard in its electronic slot. Hearing the lock disengage and the door open, Sam growled playfully, buried his head between Faith's breasts and swung her through the open doorway and into the room. Faith's arms went back around Sam's neck for security as she squealed with excitement. As Sam headed towards the bed, Faith kicked her foot out, slamming the door of their room closed behind them.


	24. Selfish

Chapter 24

Faith awoke the next morning to a dull throbbing behind her eyes. As she sat up with a groan, her brain pulsed steadily in her skull. She ground the palms of her hands into her closed eyes, the pain serving as a reminder to her why she rarely got drunk.

She felt Sam stir in bed next to her. Her hands dropped from her face. She hadn't been blackout drunk but she sure as hell couldn't remember everything from the night before. One phrase, however, came to the forefront, reverberating from her memory: satisfying a curiosity.

Faith looked at Sam, who was still surprisingly asleep, his naked form covered at the navel with a faded blue blanket. Arm tucked behind the back of his neck while his head lolled off to the side, resting comfortably on his shoulder as he slept next to her. Her eyes traveled up his bare and muscled torso as her aching brain treated her to vivid memories from the night before, ones that she could still feel. The taste of whiskey and tobacco on Sam's tongue as he kissed her urgently against the hotel room wall. The way his hands had gripped the sides of her hips, digging into her soft flesh as she had rocked and ground them urgently against his own. The distinct feel of his firm lips as they kissed and teased her hardened nipples. The timbre of his deep moan, the one that he made with his head back, jaw set and eyes closed tight.

A smile tugged at the corner of Faith's mouth, despite her headache. She slipped quietly out of bed and grabbed her tank top that had been thrown on the floor hastily the night before. Pulling it over her head, she made her way to the bathroom, closing the door soundlessly behind her. She shook four aspirin from the bottle on the counter into her hand and washed them down with great big gulps of water from the bathroom faucet. The cold water went down hard but helped the nasty case of cottonmouth that came from a night of whiskey drinking. Faith rubbed her face and stared at herself in the mirror.

"You know that was probably a bad idea, right? Was it worth it?" She asked aloud to her reflection. A small red blemish peeked out from behind the auburn locks of her hair. She pulled the messy strands up and turned her head to see a blotch of reddish purple on her neck situated just underneath the back of her ear. Faith's jaw dropped in shock, but the memory of Sam's lips gently sucking on the soft, sensitive spot of her body turned her expression quickly into that of a dopey grin.

"Yup, worth it," She told herself in the mirror with a chuckle.

Still smiling, Faith gave her hair a quick finger comb and headed back into their main room to find Sam finally awake.

"Good morning," Sam's greeted her, his voice extra gravelly.

"Morning," She mumbled sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head.

"How ya feelin'?"

"Eh, just the head. Could be worse."

She slid back into bed next to Sam, the crisp sheets feeling good on her warm body.

"You tied one on pretty good last night," He said, turning towards her on his side, mildly impressed.

"I know! I'm not the going out and getting hammered kind of person. But yesterday, yesterday I just really need to," She said emphatically.

"Hey, I get it. The last few days, work's gettin' us nowhere, and a hard day yesterday, you had to let off a little steam. Decompress so to speak."

Sam gently ran his index finger down Faith's forearm, circling her knuckles before traveling back to her elbow and beginning the rotation again.

"No regrets?" He asked the small patch of the white sheet between them, unsure he would be able to meet her eyes depending on her answer.

Faith lay quietly next to Sam for a moment, tracing small patterns idly with her finger on the bed. She knew what she was getting herself into when she kissed him last night, booze or no booze. The feelings that she had for Sam had been consistently growing with each passing day and, being honest with herself; she was just so damn lonely. But she wasn't some starry-eyed teenager; she didn't expect one night together to mean anything other than what it was, a night of fun. Faith knew that once this was over, with or without that treasure, he would be gone and she would never see him again. _I'm good with my one night_ , she told herself.

"Not a one," she said, a small, warm smile on her lips as she finally met his eyes. "You?"

"Me? Nope, life's too short for that," He said, pulling her close to him so she could lay her head on his bare chest.

"So where do we go from here?" Faith asked, staring at the cracked ceiling of the hotel room.

Sam's body tensed. He wasn't ready for this conversation. He had feelings for Faith, and they had had a night of fun, but in all honesty, he had no idea how to answer that question.

 _One roll in the hay a relationship does not make; she's smart enough to know that. Last night was just to have a little fun and satisfy a curiosity or two like she said. Right? Right! So what the hell is she asking?_

"What do you mean?" He asked cautiously.

"We got no leads left to follow, where do we go next?"

"Oh," He said with a soundless chuckle, the tension escaping his body, "I don't know. I'll put a call into Victor, see if he has any ideas. Other than that, I got nothin'."

Faith drummed her feet anxiously under the blanket.

"I got one more place we should go."

"Yeah? Where?"

"We should visit Robert."

Sam's brow furrowed.

"Who the hell is Robert?" He questioned.

"Robert is a doll...possibly with magical powers," She explained, trying to pick her words out delicately.

Sam lifted her chin. He wanted to make sure he heard this right.

"You're kidding me, right?"

"It can also curse people," She finished matter-of-factly.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the line, we're down to magic dolls," He quipped as he slid out of bed. Faith sighed and pushed her head back into the pillows.

Sam slid on a pair of black chinos and grabbed his cigarettes. He needed his morning smoke. Lighting one quickly, he opened the door to the room. As he stood in the doorway, he grabbed the overhead frame, stretching the morning ache out of his back.

"C'mon, it's at that Martello Tower place, the one we passed a couple of times on our way out to Stock Island. Maybe it can point us in the right direction," Faith said half-heartedly.

"It's a doll, sweetheart, not a crystal ball."  
"Maybe if we asked him nicely," She said, propping herself up on her elbows to look at him.

Sam shot her a look, one as if she had grown another head.

"I know it's not gonna talk to me," Faith chuffed. "Fine, Ronni at the bar told me about it, and it sounded cool, so honestly, I'm sure it will get us nowhere but I just really want to see a haunted doll," She confessed.

"Wouldn't it have been easier if you had just said that?" Sam eyed her.

"Yes."

Faith sat up, wrapping her arms around a bent knee.

"Hey, Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"You didn't dream last night, did you?" She asked him gingerly.

Sam stood in the doorway frozen by her question. He hadn't even realized that it was the first time in years he hadn't had his Panamanian nightmare. He didn't have it every night, but his subconscious managed to manifest it in some twisted form at least a couple times a week. Last night marked a week without the dreams.

"No, I didn't," He spoke, gazing at the parking lot in front of him, watching the waves of heat wiggle on the black asphalt.

"Good, seems like they've been getting better."

"They have," He agreed, recalling a faint memory of Faith, a twisted one of her in a witches hat where she rubbed his chest and told him that everything was alright while she stared at him with her brown eyes big bright and sincere.

"What do dream about?" She pressed. She had tried her best to piece together what Sam's nightmares were about to no avail. Between the pained grunts and moans in his sleep, she had managed to decipher the words 'jail', 'Nathan,' 'pal' and 'animal,' words that only left about eight million scenarios to chose from. After a couple of nights not being woken up by Sams sweaty thrashing, Faith figured it was worth a shot to see if he would talk about it.

In the sound of the distant waves, Sam heard the echo of Rafe's drunken laughter. Gooseflesh flashed across his arms as he took a final drag off of his smoke.

"Bein' chased by a big bowl of spaghetti. Lots of scary sauce, giant meatballs, it's terrifying," Sam told her as he pitched his cigarette butt into the parking lot and closed the door to their room.

Faith snorted and shook her head. She had pressed just a little too far.

"So, haunted doll?" He asked.

"Haunted doll," She said, grabbing a hair tie from the nightstand next to her. With her hair raised in her hands, Sam saw the purplish mark crawling out from under her ear.

"Holy shit, did I do that?" He gasped, coming toward her to get a closer look. Faith finished threading her hair through the elastic as Sam examined it, gently moving the stray hairs out of his way.

Feeling his gentle touch on her neck made Faith want to close her eyes and give in to the full body moan that was trying to escape her. Biting her lip, she pushed the urge down.

"Yeah buster, that was all you," She said accusingly.

"Wow. Normally they're more of a fuschia," Sam said as he admired his handiwork.

Faith uttered a sigh of disgust and batted his hand away.

"Didn't anyone teach you it's tacky to leave hickeys?" She chastised.

Sam turned toward the window and pointed behind him to his back.

"Yeah? And what about these?"

Four parallel scratches ran across both his shoulder blades while small crescent indented dashes dotted around his shoulders. The long marks weren't deep enough to draw blood, but the scraped skin formed puffy, rosy pink lines on his back.

Faith looked down guiltily as the blood rushed to her face.

"Wounds of a job well done!" Faith said with giggly enthusiasm.


	25. Thunder

Chapter 25

The East Martello Tower sat on the southern edge of the island. It was a squat and sturdy brick building with arms that enveloped an inner courtyard. As Sam and Faith stood in front of what they were told for the most part was an 'art gallery,' taking in the masonry details, the two treasure hunters, one seasoned and one new, felt as if they had been smacked square in the middle of the forehead.

"Are you seeing this Samuel?" Faith asked as her eyes wandered the building.

Sam stood silent, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Seriously, are you seeing this? Narrow windows, adjacent to the sea, turrets! Turrets, Samuel! This was a fort!"

"When did you suddenly become so knowledgeable in fort construction?" He asked, his head cocked to the side, letting the sun beat down on the birds in flight on his neck.

"Since I've been surrounded by history books and infomercials at 2AM for the last month. How did we miss this?" Faith marveled.

"We've been busy looking everywhere else. Art galleries with haunted dolls weren't exactly high on the priority list."

"But we passed by this building a dozen times, how did we not notice it?"

"I don't know about you, but I was trying to not run over the people that were running across the road. It's sort of a busy spot if you hadn't noticed," Sam said, pointing across the four-lane ocean side highway. A long swath of beach that hosted a crowd of swimmers, surfers and sun worshippers sat on the other side. People on bikes and rollerblades with dogs in tow rode the length of the sidewalk. It had to have been the busiest beach Faith had ever seen.

"C'mon, let's go. Still feel like an idiot cause we missed this," She grumbled, shoving her hands into the front pockets of her Capri cargo pants as they walked towards the front door.

The brick, concrete, and cement brought a damp coolness to the hallways of the Martello Tower, providing a brief respite for them from the warm temperatures outside. Modern metalwork sculptures dotted the gardens in the courtyard. Paintings and photographs, all rich in color and detail, lined the dull, gray stone halls, a timeline of the island told through the displayed artwork.

Faith grabbed a thin pamphlet from the rack inside the doors and opened it hastily. Sam snatched it from her hands.

"You really love your maps, don't you?"

Faith glowered at him.

"Yes I do Mr. Treasure Hunter," She said with her best 'Well if that ain't the pot calling the kettle black' voice.

"C'mon, let's just poke around and see what we can find," He said, discreetly putting the map back in the rack behind him and directed her down a curving hallway, his hand on the small of her back, urging her forward.

Faith let her eyes meander blankly over the paintings of sunsets and shipwrecks. In the back of her mind, negativity was abounding. She had already convinced herself that they weren't going to find anything here. As they wandered down the hall, it became evident the building modernized, and any hope of finding anything leftover waned, short of digging up the garden in the building's center.

Meanwhile, Sam ran his hands' overexposed walls and checked the stone windowsills. He hadn't expected to find anything here either except that damn doll, but he figured he should be thorough and check the place over anyway.

Entering the courtyard, Faith's eyes were drawn the large piece in front of her. She had quickly made her way through the cement hallway, the paintings of indigenous flowers and marine life failing to grab her attention.

At ten feet tall, the yellow seahorse was the largest metal sculpture in the garden. Tucked away in the corner like a forgotten relic, it towered over the overgrown parrot's beak plants that flanked it from either side.

Faith stared up at the piece, appreciating its quirkiness and sheer size. In her content state, a thought began to grow.

 _Look what they let happen to this thing,_ she thought in a small voice as she began to notice the wear and tear on the artwork. Her brows furrowed.

 _They let it waste away. It's here, but it's not the same as it was. It's just a shell of what it was._ The thoughts in her head began to ramp up the speed on the crazy treadmill they were on.

 _It was amazing, and it withered away to nothing! Nothing! And it won't do anything to save itself! Nope, can't do that! And you wanna know why?_ An angry haze haloed her mind as the rational thought was thrown out the window for this trip down an A.D.D mental rabbit hole of inner turmoil.

 _You're not worth it. You're not enough._

"I found your Chucky doll," Sam whispered in her ear from behind. The voice and two strong hands suddenly resting on Faith's shoulders made her jump.

"Don't do that!" She said, twisting away from him. "People are following us you know! I don't need to be anymore jumpy!"

"Sorry," He apologized with his hands defensively in the air, his lips pursed together in a thin line to suppress his laughter.

Faith let out a frustration relieving snort, but internally thankful to him for pulling her out of her own head, which could be a terrifying place sometimes.

In front of the statue, she let her fingers jump across the pokey gears that made up its belly. The once vibrant yellow paint had dulled over time. The hot Florida sun was baking the color out while the sea salt from the Gulf took the color off, leaving small pits in the paint. A roughly cut piece of volcanic glass served as an eye. The rock's deep black color absorbed the afternoon sunlight and reflected a hidden green tint in the stone, giving the art a striking quality.

"That supposed to be a seahorse?" Sam asked, looking up at the protruding snout.

"Yup, made out of old bike gears."

"Had a cellmate in prison for a little while that made these little animal carvings out of wet newspapers."

"Well, that's interesting."

"He'd also put pieces of bologna over the light in the cell to try and make jerky. Always made the place stink like goddamn burnt hot dogs."

Faith stared at him blankly.

"Well, it did."

The duo crossed to the other side of the large courtyard and through a stone doorway which lead to the other side of the old fort. A sign pointed left, announcing the 'WEIRDLY KEY WEST COLLECTION, FEATURING KEY WEST'S OWN ROBERT THE DOLL'! Sam's pace stalled as he read the sign and came to a halt.

"You go find your doll, I'm gonna poke around down here," Sam dismissed her with a wave and started towards the right wing of the building.

"You don't wanna see Robert?"

Sam thought back to the morning he sat with Nathan. The two brothers, finally reunited after almost 15 years, watched the sun come up over the river in New Orleans. Nate regaled Sam with tales of his adventures and the wonders he experienced since he had last seen him. Sam heard about El Dorado, Shambala, Iram... and all of the supernatural beings that Nate had run into while looking for them. Searching for the lost documents of Abraham Lincoln wasn't exactly looking for the lost city of Atlantis, but he felt the need to play it safe for once and avoid anything with the potential of being otherworldly.

"Nah, I'm good," Sam assured her.

Faith passed underneath the wide stone arches of the fort, the ever-present layer of sand crunching against the cement floor under her shoes echoed through the hallway.

A moderate size vestibule retrofitted with modern glass doors held the bulk of the exhibit with Robert, their central showpiece, getting his own special room at the back. Faith spied a large group of tourists crowded around a glass case in the middle of Robert's room, holding up cell phones with the occasional flash lighting up the room for a picture, talking excitedly. Assuming that they would be a while, Faith hung back. She wanted to get a good look at him without having to peek and squeeze around the tourists.

A mix of paintings and enlarged photographs hung on the walls, while odd trinkets stood in front of large explanatory signs.

Faith meandered around the stone chamber. The lid of a coffin leaned against one wall behind a blue velvet rope, along with a warning of DO NOT TOUCH. There were two black and whites of Key West Cemetery. She examined them with light-hearted curiosity, hoping to maybe get a glimpse of where she and Sam had found the headstones for the men from the Third Artillery, just to say to herself, 'Hey! I've been there!'

Faith turned to head towards the other side of the room. For a moment, she forgot how to breathe, and a sharp nail ran down her spine as she locked eyes with the portrait and plaque across from her.

After weeks of research, she knew all of the major players from the Lincoln assassination, as well as anyone associated with his widow until her death in 1882.

And she knew the man on the wall.

The man was Dr. Samuel Mudd.

She approached the side of the room cautiously, almost afraid that if she moved too quickly, the information would bolt like a scared dog or dissolve into thin air as if just a hopeful dream. Finally standing in front of it, Faith reached out, ignoring the signs of warning posted around the museum, and touched the portrait affixed to the wall. It was real.

Faith bolted down the hallway. She ran at full speed, bouncing off the shoulders of tourists like a pinball against its bumpers. She skidded to a stop almost toppling over Sam, who was examining a large canon that had been painted lime green.

Sam's arms shot up reflexively and grabbed her shoulders before she could bowl him over.

"Whoa! Hey! Easy now!"

"Sam," She said gruffly, her voice hoarse from the quick sprint and the adrenaline that pumped through her veins.

"You ever think they hid anything in here?" He asked, motioning to the large metal barrel.

"I found something," Faith breathed.

Sam's train of thought derailed and disappeared. Those were the words he had been wanting to say or waiting to hear for weeks.

"Show me."


	26. Who Do You Love

Chapter 26

Faith grabbed Sam by the hand and led him down the populated corridor. The sun was at its apex of the afternoon, sending tourists off the beach and into the gallery for some respite from the overwhelming heat.

The excitement Faith felt radiated off of her and Sam felt as if he was grasping a live wire. The neon colors that had awoken within her when they had first swiped that diary in Springfield had emerged and taken hold of her again. Sam saw suspicious glances in their direction, more of them being garnered by the second as she half ran, dragging him behind her like a bored dad at Disneyland. Seeing this, he pulled her back by his side to slow their pace.

"Slow it down, you got half the place staring at you," Sam murmured in her ear. Draping an arm across her shoulders, he kept the two of them at a steady pace as the curious faces gradually turned away from them.

The portrait of a solemn, middle-aged Dr. Samuel Mudd hung square on the wall; the man's narrow chin hid behind a scraggly beard, a vast contrast to the baldness of his head.

A printed picture hung next to it, a large hexagon building of dark red brick floating in a vast expanse of bright blue ocean.

Written over the photo display was a story that Faith now knew by heart. The plot to assassinate the head members of the Lincoln government, the failure of Atzerodt and Paine to murder Johnson and Seward. The trial that indited Mudd as a conspirator for setting the broken leg of John Wilkes Boothe.

A black and white photograph of a cement doorway stood out atop the colorful contrast of the print beneath it. A heavy door with a heavy lock stood open in the shot while a small plaque hung above its entryway. The carved words wobbled, but the sign was still legible:

 _Whoso Entereth Here Leaveth All Hopes Behind_

"Mudd's cell," Faith said in a small voice.

Sam's eyes scanned over the small paragraph underneath.

"It was an inactive fort, so they used it as a military prison. He helped treat prisoners and soldiers while he was here when yellow fever broke out in 1867, that's how the asshole got his goddamn pardon," His voice dropped to a growl. Frustration pulled at his eyebrows, making his eyes seem to go dark.

"Even inactive, it's massive. If it's here in Key West, how the hell did we miss it?"

"That's because it's not in Key West," Faith told him while she read the fine print at the bottom of the glossy picture, "It's 75 miles west of here _in the middle of the Gulf_."

Her heart was racing as fast as the thoughts in her head. This had to be it. She could feel it, and Sam could feel it too.

Sam's mouth began to travel a mile a minute, spewing forth plans, how to get there, how to find his millions and how to spend it.

Faith stared at the portrait of the famed Dr. Mudd.

Sam's words lost meaning for her as she stared into the dark eyes of the painting, reduced to a dull murmur in her ears. The sound disappeared entirely, as heady anger began to form in its void. A swirling eddy of dark thoughts built up a fury within her that she hadn't felt since she was a teenager, the eyes of the portrait fueled the needless fire.

 _You son of a bitch. Look at everything you've caused._

"Faith." Sam tapped her on the shoulder, causing her to shift her glare towards him instead of the portrait.

"Whoa, hey. What?" He questioned, pulling his hand back quickly.

"Look at everything his caused," Faith muttered, resuming her stare at the picture of Mudd.

"All he did was fix the guys leg."

"And that leg belonged to the guy that killed Lincoln."

"Not his fault, he didn't pull the trigger," Sam retorted.

"Guilty by association Samuel."

"Just because history made him out to be a Bad Guy doesn't mean he was a bad guy."

"You don't know that."

Sam brought his face close to hers, his tobacco laced breath wafting up Faith's nose.

"Guess what? Neither do you,"

Faith bit the inside of her cheeks, unable to come up with a response. She could only lower her eyes in silence.

"Alright, now, let's go get this thing," Sam declared and began to stalk down the hall, a sense of purpose in his step, towards the front doors as Faith tried to keep up with his long strides next to him. "It's a fort in the middle of the goddamn ocean so, lucky for us, there can only be so many places to hide it. We'll hit the bar, Ronni should be workin' this afternoon, she's gotta know a guy we can charter a boat from."

"You think I'll find my answers somewhere in there?" Faith asked. As the days had turned into weeks, her original search for answers about her family had warped into this larger than life treasure hunt. She had allowed herself to get swept up into Sam Drake's world and into Sam himself. What started with dipping a tentative toe in the water turned into a swan dive into a dangerous blue abyss where the warm water churned with excitement and showed no signs of slowing down.

"They're there, and if for some reason they're not, we keep goin' til we get them," He assured her.

"What if the treasure is there, but my answers aren't?" She asked, giving the sleeve of his t-shirt a gentle tug, bringing him to a stop.

Faith's answers had always been secondary for Sam on this adventure. Finding that treasure was his primary goal from the moment that Nathan had uttered, 'worth a shitload' and he made no qualms about it either. He wanted to be rich; he wanted a find that was all his own. Finding Libertalia was fantastic for Sam, and as much as he enjoyed sharing the adventure and the discovery with his brother, there was that selfish part of him that kept him wanting more just for himself. In his mind, Faith was just this person he was in charge of. Keep her safe and get her home. Sam hadn't counted on the llama loving, personal demons dealing, Depeche Mode dancing Faith Spencer that had emerged from that dark blue dress two months ago and boldly stole his shirt, taking a piece of his heart and a sliver of his soul with her in the process.

So the question gave Sam pause for only a moment.

"Like I said, we keep going until we get them. It'll just be easier with me being a millionaire," Sam the corner of his mouth raised into a cocky grin.

" _We_ keep going? We?" Faith's heart fluttered in her chest. She had resigned herself to the fact that this crazy chapter, hell it was more like an insane novel, in her life was coming to a close. The Book of Sam Drake would end with a goodbye, and she had steeled herself for it. The possibility of an epilogue to their story hadn't been a hope for her, until now.

"Yeah," He said softly to Faith, gently taking the tip of her chin between his rough fingers and tilting her head up until her eyes met his.

"We."

It was a simple word. Short and to the point. Faith found its meaning in Sam's warm hazel eyes where the two letters spoke volumes.

He released her chin and stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his pants.

"I mean, that is, if you can put up with me that long. I've been told once or twice that I can be a real pain in the ass sometimes," He said with a sigh, his playful charm back front and center, stowing away his emotional side.

"Sounds like a conservative estimate," Faith rebutted bluntly. Sam scoffed and continued towards the entrance. After a single stride, Faith grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Wait! Hold up!"

"What?" Sam said, trying not to sound too impatient.

"I never saw Robert. Gimme two seconds!" Faith said, already jogging back down the concrete corridor before Sam could protest. He eyed the front doors of the gallery a few feet away and wrapped his fingers around the pack of cigarettes in his pocket.

 _Might as well have one while I wait,_ Sam thought and strode casually out through the entrance, positioning himself near the freestanding post ashtray next to the building.

Faith entered the WEIRDLY KEY WEST section of the museum again. This time, the tourist hustle and bustle had thinned out, leaving the exhibit all to herself. She headed towards the small room that held the doll, making sure to avert her eyes from the portrait of Mudd on the wall. For the next few minutes, she just wanted to revel in the quirkiness of something cool.

Faith opened the glass doors to find herself in a small room. The walls told the story of Robert, his origins and his mischiefs in the town, along with a warning: 'Beware! Ask permission of Robert to take his picture. If you don't do this, you do it at your own risk!' Faith smiled and looked towards the right where a giant blackboard stood. A layer of chalk dust coat it, little fingerprints letting the black base show through. A nub of chalk dangled from a string and magnetic metal clips dotted the boards surface, some with small pieces of paper attached. Above it all hung a sign, asking you to 'Leave a Message for Robert!' Faith smiled. Bubbly anticipation welled inside her as she began to formulate already what she wanted to write.

She finally approached the square exhibit case made of glass in the center of the room. Robert the Doll stood on a riser, bringing him to eye level. Faith had seen the Chucky movies, Annabelle and all of their horrid sequels. All of those films had been based on the doll in front of her. She had steeled herself, expecting something sinister looking and found herself to be very wrong.

Robert looked like any other doll in a museum that was made at the turn of the century. He was the size of a small child, dressed in a sailors outfit, complete with cap, and sitting up in a small wooden chair. A fabric casing simply stuffed with straw, his face was basic, and its features merely indented to define them. Small divets dotted the matte brown skin of his face where time had worn it away, giving him the likeness of a child with pockmarks. In the crook of his arm, he held a small stuffed dog with tightly curled tan fur.

Not in the least what Faith had pictured.

"Wow, anticlimactic," She muttered to herself, studying the quality stitching that held the doll together. "No offense meant, just not at all what I pictured," Faith apologized, taking a step back and blew out a nervous breath. "I know granting your wishes isn't your area but, if you have any influence, could you please help me find the answers about my family and why we have that Bible? I would really appreciate it."

"I really like your little doggy by the way," She added with a lopsided grin.

A large hand suddenly wrapped around her mouth and nose. Sam had done this to her before, which took away the startling feeling she felt the previous times. She began to roll her eyes and froze. The lingering smell of nicotine or the tangy scent of his aftershave wasn't there. Instead, the smell was sweetly astringent, bringing to mind a fruity tequila. It was also coming from a rough cloth pressed between the strange hand and her face.

Faith clawed frantically at the hand, pulling hard, trying to scream as loud as she could. She stomped her feet blindly to make more noise and with the desperate hope of landing a foot of the man behind her but his strong upper body kept her forward. Her brain pleaded and prayed for Sam to hear the commotion. Her eyes searched for something to grab on to when a heavy mist settled in her head. Faith's thoughts became muddled as her limbs grew lead heavy. The noise from her decreasing struggle began to sound hollow. As her brain slowed and her sight darken, Faith saw a translucent reflection of the hand wrapped tight around her middle in Robert's glass case.

The hand was deformed.

Sam checked the time on his phone. Fifteen minutes and two smokes had passed since Faith went to visit her funky doll. He contorted his face in annoyance.

"C'mon honey, it's a doll, we got a lot better things to go look at," He muttered openly to no one. He looked around the lobby of the building which had become eerily quiet as the tourists emptied back out onto the beach. He glanced absentmindedly through the doorway into the grassy courtyard. A meter long iguana dashed across the lawn, fast enough for Sam to register a whizzing by of green hues. Something didn't feel right.

 _She should be back out here by now,_ he thought, as goosebumps rippled across the back of his neck. Sam stalked quickly down the hallway, his expression darkened and his heart sped with every tourist he noticed was gone, the hall empty. Seeing the WEIRD KEY WEST sign, he broke into a sprint, calling out Faith's name. Sam strode purposefully through the exhibit.

"Faith?" He called loudly, making a beeline for the tinted window room where the doll was.

"Faith!" Sam shouted as he flung open the glass doors.

Save for the doll in his glass case and the decor on the walls; the room was empty. Sam's eyes scanned the room wildly. The writing on the chalkboard made him stop breathing, stop hearing, stop functioning except to read the words in front of him. Written in chalk, in flowing, perfect script.

 _I've taken your queen. Your move Mr. Drake. With kindest regards, - J._


	27. I'm Not Driving Anymore

Chapter 27

Sam stormed through the doorway of the motel room, the door slamming into the thin wall hard enough to rattle its frame.

 _Son of a bitch, son of a bitch_ , he thought. Sam wiped the nervous sweat from his upper lip and shook another cigarette out of his pack and lit it with trembling hands while he paced in the confining space that he and Faith shared. Going to the cheap dresser that sat in the middle of the room, he yanked open the bottom drawer and pulled out the nine millimeter he had stashed underneath a pile of sloppily folded t-shirts. Setting it down on the bedspread, he went to the closet where Faith had stowed their duffels. As Sam dug through her black backpack, the smell of Faith that had clung to her clothes permeated the tiny closet. The citrusy scent made him angry, an unnecessary reminder that he had failed as a protector.

 _Fuck, just fuckin'- I'm a just- fucking FUCK!_

His hands finally touched smooth metal. Sam pulled out the small 9mm that he had given Faith when this adventure had started.

He wanted more guns. He wanted a goddamn army.

 _Too bad Nadine don't own Shoreline anymore. Hell, she probably wouldn't even answer the phone._

Sam stared at the two handguns on the bedspread, his arms crossed in front of him while his thumbs drummed nervously against his elbows.

 _I need more firepower._

Sam took one last drag and pitched his half-smoked cigarette into the sink. He ran the tap briefly to extinguish it while he grabbed his phone. Sam opened his contacts. His finger hovered momentarily over the DIAL command.

 _I gotta do this. I don't wanna do this, but I gotta do this. He's the only one that's got what I need._

He dialed the number and waited what felt like an eternity between rings of the phone before it was finally picked up on the other end.

"Hello?"

"Victor, I need your help."

The voice on the other end hesitated. "What did you do?" Sully scolded him. His anger dripped through the phone.

"I need the name of every arms dealer you got in the Keys."

"What did you do?" Sully repeated.

"Legal, illegal, I don't care. I just need firepower." Sam told him and ignored the question entirely.

"I asked you a goddamn question, Samuel, what the hell did you do?" He shouted into the phone.

Sam hung his head.

"Jasper took Faith."

Sully's end was nothing but silence.

"I know I screwed up-"

"You think?" Sully suddenly shouted which cause Sam to wince.

"I know, but I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna get her back, and I'm gonna end this," Sam said with determination.

"Call Knucky and Steve Ricker, then call whoever they tell you to. I'll send you their number. I'll be there in three hours."

"I'm doing this myself, Victor," Sam argued.

"I'll be there in three hours," Sully said in a low icy voice and ended the call.

Sam let the phone drop from his ear. Closing his eyes tight, he smacked the back of his head against the wall.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" He growled, each word accented by the dull thud of his skull against the drywall.

Faith felt herself drift into a hazy state of consciousness. A very hazy state. She could hear the sound of the ocean, albeit muffled, and faintly taste the sea salt on her dry lips. She let her brown eyes open gingerly, squinting against the bright Florida sunlight. As her senses came back to her, her eyes began to focus. Ahead was a sight to behold. The Gulf of Mexico, blue as an azure crystal, rippling in front of her and stretching as far as she could see. It was breathtaking.

She would have appreciated it more if she wasn't tied to a chair.

Faith could feel thorough wood underneath her as its edge bit into the bottoms of her thighs. Her forearms and ankles were secured in place solidly with duct tape while a length of rope resting beneath her bosom bound her upright.

 _Oh no, not good. Not good, not good, not good._

She tested the tape that held her arms in place. Whoever had tied her up had sadly done a good job, giving her no wiggle room whatsoever.

"Good evening, Miss Spencer."

Faith turned her head towards the source of the familiar southern drawl.

Jasper Nox strolled towards her down a long brick corridor. In his short-sleeved white shirt and Panama hat, he reminded her of the guy from _Jurassic Park_ , the owner, he even had an ornate cane as he did. Jasper's was a sleek black onyx, the handle carved into an eagle with its wings stretched back, poised in position to attack its prey.

"Isn't she just a majestic sight?" He said, motioning to the ocean through the arches he passed, the large corridor lined with crumbling brick arcs on both sides.

"I've seen the ocean over one thousand times, and I tell you, she still manages to take my breath away every time," Nox said, leaning thoughtfully against the archway where Faith was positioned. "Have you seen the ocean before Miss Spencer?"

Faith opened her mouth to respond with the expletives floating in her head, but all that she could produce was a faint croaking, wheezing sound.

Jasper knelt down next to her and grabbed a juice box from the floor next to her. He poked the small straw through the top and held it up to her lips. Faith kept her mouth shut tight in defiance.

 _Nope, I'm not getting dosed again. Nuh uh, not happening._

"I assure you, it is plain cranberry juice. Scout's honor," He said, giving the solemn Boy Scout salute as a show of honesty.

 _I did see him just open it..._

 _Oh, fuck it, I'm dyin' here,_ Faith thought before clamping her mouth down on the straw in front of her, and sucked at it gratefully. Jasper smiled as the box crumpled in his hand before Faith let the straw go, her thirst only partially quenched but at least her throat didn't feel like the Sahara anymore.

Before she could stop herself, she muttered a "Thank you," her voice now back where it belonged.

 _And you just thanked your captor. Nice Spencer, real nice._

"You're most welcome!" Jasper said, surprised at her manners.

"I don't believe we were ever properly introduced at the Mariner's Gala. Jasper Evangeline Nox," He said, removing his hat. Bowing deep in front of Faith with his ponytail of red hair tumbling over his shoulder, he took hold of her restrained hand and gave the back of it a gentlemanly kiss.

Faith could only imagine what this looked like. She also wondered if all kidnappers introduced themselves this way.

"It is quite the pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. These past few weeks have proven you to be an interesting character, to say the least," Jasper continued, regarding Faith like a specimen of a science experiment.

"What do you want?" She asked, trying to keep her voice as evenly toned as possible. Sounded desperate or freaked out wouldn't help matters any.

"Straight to the point! Most unlike a woman, how refreshing!," He said, clasping his hands together in delight. The dig at her gender made Faith's nose wrinkle.

"All I am looking for is the location of the diary of John Wilkes Booth. Once you give me that, you can be on your way," He said, making it sound as simple as drawing a square.

"It's with the rest of the Lincoln stuff. Some fort, in the middle of fuckin' nowhere," She told him, the last word managing to just leave her lips before Jasper brought his cane down hard on her hand with a _thwap!_

"Language!" He bellowed. The word carried through the concrete corridor like a boom of thunder and echoed through the archways into the courtyard inside. Faith closed her eyes and bit the inside of her lip to keep from yelling, or cursing even more. She flexed her fingers. Thankfully, they all moved, despite the throbbing in the top of her hand.

"I will not tolerate such foul language coming from a woman. Is this understood?" Jasper said, enunciating each word slowly. He leaned forward. His face close to hers, evil green eyes staring over the head of his cane that threatened the space between the two of them. Faith glanced down at the figurehead, the hooked beak nose of the black eagle almost touching hers.

 _Don't ever argue with crazy people, Boogie_ , the words of wisdom from Susan Spencer burbled up to the surface of her mind, making her yearn for the warm safety of her mother's arms.

Faith gave a small nod.

"Good, now that we have that little matter out of the way, we can resume business. Where is the Booth diary?"

"I don't know other than with the rest of the Abraham Lincoln stuff," Faith spoke truthfully.

"You're sure of this fact?" Jasper verified.

"Yes."

"And where is that located?"

Faith sighed in frustration. The redundancy of his questioning making her grow restless.

"Fort Jefferson, it's in the middle of the...ocean, in the middle of...nowhere," Her voice trailed as the realization of her current location settled in.

"Yes Miss Spencer, I had managed to deduce that much, as you have _finally_ seemed to recognize," Jasper said with a grand sweep of his hand to the building that surrounded them, the sarcasm in his voice more than evident.

"75 miles to the closest thing around that could even remotely be considered as civilization," He continued, his voice hollow in her ears where she heard nothing but the sound of her heart trying to pound its way through her rib cage.

 _I'm alone in the middle of nowhere, I'm alone with a mad man, I'm alone, I'm alone._

 _Whap!_

Jasper brought the head of his cane down hard on Faith's other hand, the beak breaking the skin enough for a bead of blood to form.

"Focus!" Jasper yelled, "You will pay attention as well as using appropriate language is this understood?" He said, bringing his face closer to hers with each snarled word.

"Yes," Faith agreed.

"Wonderful, now shall we continue?" Jasper questioned breezily, his menacing demeanor changing quick as the tides. When Faith didn't answer immediately, his eyes began to darken again. Jasper cleared his throat, enough to bring Faith out of her momentary daze and her focus back towards him.

"Mm-hmm," She said with an emphatic nod.

"I really am a reasonable man Miss Spencer, I just simply want what is mine. To be quite honest, besides that Booth diary, I couldn't give two dimes for what happens to the rest of that stuff. Burn it, sell it, throw it in the ocean for all I care as long as I get what is mine."

"How's that diary yours?" Faith asked. In all the research she and Sam had done, she had never seen Jasper's name or even the surname of Nox.

"A brief history lesson then," Jasper began as he took off his hat, trying fruitlessly to wipe away the sand and dirt on the floor before placing it down on the aged cement. "By now, I'm sure you are aware of Mrs. Lincoln and her proclivities to collecting all things concerning the matter of her husband's _tragic_ death."

 _Wow, Confederate sympathizer much? Maybe? Just a touch?_

Faith gritted her teeth to contain her sarcastic quip and snort. With both of her hands still stinging, she knew to keep her mouth shut.

"It was confirmed, multiple times, over the years, that one of the items she had acquired was the private journal of one John Wilkes Booth. And stored within the pages of that folio lies the Atzerodt confession," He finished, both hands clasped together in front of him, his good hand masking his bad.

"What Atzerodt confession?"

Jasper sighed and shook his head at Faith like she was the world's biggest disappointment.

"I see this history lesson won't be as brief as I'd hoped. John Booth, you see, his action was just one of many to be carried out that night. While Mr. Booth was set to take care of Mr. Lincoln, a man by the name of George Atzerodt was charged with the disposal of-"

"Andrew Johnson, the vice president," Faith interjected, hoping to speed this along. Jasper regarded her interjection with a look of somewhere between impressed and irritated. He began to pace as he told the rest of the tale,

"Now this group of rebel seditionists, determined to change the course of history by disposing of the current government regime, met in secret for months until their plan was set. While Booth did manage to succeed in his part of the plan, Mr. Atzdrodt did not."

"He got drunk and chickened out," Faith added. Jasper's face snapped towards her in anger.

"He changed his mind and came to his senses now may I continue?" He yelled, annoyed, his arms stretched dramatically apart.

Faith closed her eyes while her stomach flip-flopped, waiting to feel the cane on her hands or somewhere worse on her body. When nothing came, she looked up at Jasper meekly.

"I'm sorry," She said in barely a whisper.

"Now," He continued, setting his cane aside momentarily to smooth the front of his shirt, "When the dust had settled, and the government had rounded up their band of rebels, Mr. Atzerodt gave the constables a detailed confession of the groups treasonous crimes. The secret meetings, the gathering of provisions by Dr. Mudd and the Surratts. He even handed over the diary Mr. Booth kept, the whole kit n' caboodle. And did you know it was only meant to be a kidnapping? There was no talk of murder before John Booth went and changed his mind!"

Faith was at a loss for words, unsure how someone could be so bitter and dramatic from something that happened so long ago?

"Meanwhile, Dr. Mudd insisted that Mr. Booth was a friend, nay, an acquaintance! That he knew nothing! And _he_ was just upholding his medical oath," Jasper spat the words out, leaving shiners of saliva in his red mustache.

"What about what they got from Atzerodt?" Faith asked curiously, she didn't see herself getting out of this predicament anytime in the immediate future. After weeks of no information and no leads, the reason for this journey seemed to be coming to a head, the answers she'd been searching for somewhere close.

"Now Dr. Mudd knew what that confession could mean for him, it was his golden ticket. Between the time they were questioned and the trial, the confession vanished along with Booth's diary, which of course would have been just as damnatory for him. Gone. All traces either ever existed, erased! Dr. Mudd was given leniency while George Atzerodt swung from the gallows. Of course, between the words of a distinguished doctor, or a carriage repairman, whose story do you think they chose to believe?"

Faith let the lapping of the ocean fill the moment of silence. Jasper was on a roll and Faith was too afraid of the consequences of stopping it.

"Dr. Mudd became a prisoner here and very soon assured everyone he had changed his ways. Became a model inmate, helped out as fort doctor when the yellow fever hit. So they decided to let him go! Then, years later, the government had nothin' else betta' to do an' they went n' pardoned the slick son of a bitch!" Jasper's thick southern voice grew from a bitter annoyance to a core-deep frustrated roar as he slammed his cane down violently against the floor. Faith jumped, the sound reminding her of a pool cue being accidentally dropped.

With a sigh and a surprising gracefulness, Nox bent down and picked up his cane with his good hand.

"I deeply apologize Miss Spencer for my language."

"What do you want with me?" Faith asked quickly. The question had been screaming in her head since she had regained consciousness. She had been too afraid of the possible answer until now, convinced if she had to listen to her psychopathic kidnapper apologize to her one more time, she was going to scream.

"As I have said, you just need to simply tell me the location of John Booth's diary," Jasper said, his original temperament returned.

"It's with the Lincoln stuff," She repeated. She was really getting tired of this question.

"Yes, and where is that?" He pushed.

"I have no idea. Ask Sam Drake, he's the treasure hunter."

 _Sam,_ her brain turned to him for the first time in what felt like it had been days.

"I think you do," Jasper retaliated.

"How in the world do you think _I_ know where it is?" Faith asked, thoroughly irked.

 _Oh, Jesus Sam, where the hell are you?_

"Well, it's not without reason, Miss Spencer, you are a Mudd after all."


End file.
